Abstract
Current quantum audio watermarking schemes prioritize robustness but often overlook critical security vulnerabilities, leaving systems exposed to impersonation and unauthorized use. To address this gap, we propose a dual-security mechanism that synergistically integrates joint verification and certification of watermarks, inspired by the paging seal principle. Our framework incorporates Quantum Error Correction (QEC) coding to enhance resilience against qubit errors and malicious tampering. Experimental results show improved performance: the watermark maintains high imperceptible with SNR> 46 dB under increased embedding rates, and achieves a 62.5% reduction in average BER compared to several state-of-the-art methods at a qubit error probability of 0.10. These results suggest that the proposed approach offers enhanced security and robustness, representing a promising direction for secure quantum audio watermarking.
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Data availibility
The watermark image (MPU logo) is provided in Supplementary Figure S1. All simulation-generated data (processed audio and performance metrics) are included within this article and its supplementary materials. The MATLAB implementation code and original digital audio files used in experiments are permanently archived in Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18072766).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Project of Guangdong University Engineering Technology Center (No. 2022GCZX013), and Macao Polytechnic University under grant RP/FCA-04/2024.
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Z.X. conceived the methods and experiments, Z.X. and X.Y. conducted the experiments, Z.X. and CT.L. analysed the results. All authors wrote and reviewed the manuscript.
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Xing, Z., Lam, CT. & Yuan, X. Enhancing quantum audio watermarking security through joint verification and certification. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36535-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36535-w
