Information hiding for G.711 speech based on substitution of least significant bits and estimation of tolerable distortion

In this paper, we propose a novel data hiding technique for G.711-coded speech based on the LSB substitution method. The novel feature of the proposed method is that a low-bitrate encoder, G.726 AD-PCM, is used as a reference for deciding how many bits can be embedded in a sample. Experiments showed that the method outperformed the simple LSB substitution method and the selective embedding method proposed by Aoki. We achieved 4-kbit/s embedding with almost no subjective degradation of speech quality, and 10 kbit/s while maintaining good quality.