A Perception-based Scalable Encryption Model for AVS Audio

Audio Video coding Standard (AVS) is China's second-generation source coding/decoding standard with fully Intellectual Properties. As the sixth part of AVS standard, AVS-DRM aims to offer the universal and open interoperable standard for various requirements of digital rights management (DRM) in digital media industry. In its first version, AVS DRM committee document (CD) did not take into account the encryption modes on AVS audio. However, audio content protection also plays an important role in many digital media applications. Therefore, this paper proposes a perception-based scalable encryption approach for AVS audio, which specifies different audio encryption modes by utilizing the perception classification of the audio bitstream and provides multiple security levels by encrypting different audio coding layers. Moreover, the paper incorporates the proposed scalable encryption method in AVS audio fine-granularity scalable codec technique and then implements an AVS audio trusted coder/decoder. Several objective and subjective tests were performed on a set of 12 critical stereo excerpts provided by AVS audio group. The experimental results show that the proposed scalable encryption approach is able to provide a feasible and effective audio protection scheme for a wide range of applications with different DRM requirements. Currently, the scalable encryption scheme has been partly accepted by AVS-DRM final committee document (FCD).