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ABSTRACT:
INTRODUCTION:
Biometrics is used to identify people based on their biological traits. This growing
technological field has deep implications because proving identity is becoming an
integral part of our daily lives. Humans have used body characteristics such as face,
voice, gait, etc. for thousands of years to recognize each other. Although biometrics
emerged from its extensive use in law enforcement to identify criminals (e.g., illegal
aliens, security clearance for employees for sensitive jobs, fatherhood determination,
forensics, positive identification of convicts and prisoners), it is being increasingly used
today to establish person recognition in a large number of civilian applications.
Any human physiological and/or behavioral characteristic can be used as a biometric
characteristic as long as it satisfies the following requirements:
· Universality describes how common a biometric is found in each individual.
· Uniqueness is how well the biometric separates one individual from another.
· Permanence measures how well a biometric resists aging.
· Collectability explains how easy it is to acquire a biometric for measurement.
· Performance indicates the accuracy, speed, and robustness of the system capturing the
biometric.
· Acceptability indicates the degree of approval of a technology by the public in everyday
life.
· Circumvention is how easy it is to fool the authentication system.
A practical biometric system should meet the specified recognition accuracy, speed, and
resource requirements, be harmless to the users, be accepted by the intended
population, and be sufficiently robust to various fraudulent methods and attacks to the
system.
Biometric Systems:
Designing:
3. Matcher module, in which the features during recognition are compared against the
stored templates to generate matching scores. For example, in the matching module of a
fingerprint-based biometric system, the number of matching minutiae between the
input and the template fingerprint images is determined and a matching score is
reported. The matcher module also encapsulates a decision making module, in which a
user's claimed identity is confirmed (verification) or a user’s identity is established
(identification) based on the matching score.
4. System database module, which is used by the biometric system to store the biometric
templates of the enrolled users. The enrollment module is responsible for enrolling
individuals into the biometric system database. During the enrollment phase, the
biometric characteristic of an individual is first scanned by a biometric reader to
produce a digital representation (feature values) of the characteristic. The data capture
during the enrollment process may or may not be supervised by a human depending on
the application. A quality check is generally performed to ensure that the acquired
sample can be reliably processed by successive stages. In order to facilitate matching,
the input digital representation is further processed by a feature extractor to generate a
compact but expressive representation, called a template. Depending on the application,
the template may be stored in the central database of the biometric system or be
recorded on a smart card issued to the individual. Usually, multiple templates of an
individual are stored to account for variations observed in the biometric trait and the
templates in the database may be updated over time.
Types of Biometrics:
Fingerprint Recognition - Visual Biometric The use of the ridges and valleys (minutiae)
found on the surface tips of a human finger to identify an individual.
Face Recognition - Visual Biometric The analysis of facial features or patterns for the
authentication or recognition of an individuals identity. Most face recognition systems
either use eigen faces or local feature analysis.
Eyes - Iris Recognition - Visual Biometric The use of the features found in the iris to
identify an individual.
Eyes - Retina Recognition - Visual Biometric The use of patterns of veins in the back of
the eye to accomplish recognition
Voice - Speaker Verification - Auditory Biometric The use of the voice as a method of
determining the identity of a speaker for access control.
Voice - Speaker Recognition - Auditory Biometric The determination of identity of a
speaker use the characteristics of their voice.
Ear - Visual Biometric The identification of an individual using the shape of the ear.
Applications :
There are many applications of Biometrics. Some of them are still under the area of
testing and are optional for the end users. The accuracy and effectiveness of these
systems need to be verified in the real time operation environment. Different areas
where biometrics is employed are
Aviation Security:
Biometrics has been successfully deployed at some of the world’s largest airports. The
result has been a dramatic increase in both security and productivity. The identities of
personnel with access to aircraft, baggage areas, maintenance and service areas, ticket
counters, and boarding areas are increasingly authenticated by biometrics. In addition,
the Registered Traveler Program now being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security is using biometrics to authenticate passengers, thus enabling them to speed
their transit through security checkpoints
Border Control: Authenticating the identity of travelers who want to cross international
borders is a vital means of strengthening security in the age of terror. In coming years, a
majority of nations worldwide will require their own citizens and foreign visitors to
present biometrically-enabled border-crossing documents, meaning passports or visas
or both, upon entry and exit. In the U.S., the US-VISIT program began capturing the
biometrics of foreign visitors in early 2005. US-VISIT has succeeded in identifying and
deterring potential terrorists and led to the capture of criminals sought by law
enforcement agencies.
Gaming: The gaming industry has a particular interest in establishing and ensuring
identities by the use of biometrics. In casino cash rooms and other operations centers,
only individuals whose identities have been examined and verified can be admitted.
With millions of dollars potentially at stake, impersonators are not welcome. On casino
floors, cheaters who may be caught once and tossed out can be identified biometrically
and their records circulated to other casinos, thus discouraging them from trying to
defraud one casino after another.
Health Care: Biometrics can be a matter of life and death in health care. Biometrics can
establish personal identity from the moment patients enter the care of a physician or
medical facility, and that identity can be transmitted accurately and securely throughout
the health care system. Biometrics are used to ensure that only authorized medical
personnel can access sensitive hospital facilities, such as nurseries and operating rooms,
to see to it that prescribed medications are delivered to the proper patients, and to
safeguard the privacy of patients’ medical records by assuring that only authorized
personnel can view them.
Immigration: Just as biometrics are being deployed to authenticate the identity of
temporary visitors to the U.S. and other countries, biometrics are also being used to
verify the identity of immigrants. Biometrics are being collected as part of the routine
background investigation of applicants for immigration and asylum in order to insure
that individuals are who they claim to be.
IT Security: Biometrics play a key role in ensuring that IT devices, from computers to
cell phones, respond only to authorized users. Biometrically-enabled devices can verify
and authorize one or more users without the need for easily stolen or forgotten
passwords. Institutions that employ from five to 50 thousand employees, whether
working on site or at remote locations, can secure their IT networks through a variety of
biometric technologies.
Personal Identity: Entering facilities and conducting transactions of all sorts, from
attending a professional football game to cashing a check, increasingly depend on
establishing identity quickly and accurately. Biometrics increasingly help guarantee
personal identity, through enrolled user programs, biometrically-enabled documents
and smart cards, personal-authentication devices, cell phones and other digital
equipment, and scanners placed at fixed points of service.
Police & Public Safety: Most people don't realize that biometrics have been an important
police and security tool for over 150 years. The fingerprint was recognized early as a
unique biometric, and has been central to criminal identification and identity
verification. In the past, however, fingerprints had to be captured with ink on paper in
central booking stations, sent by mail, courier or fax to repositories to be analyzed by
experts, a process that takes hours or days. Now fingerprints have been joined by other
biometrics, and new technologies allow biometrics to be captured in the field, for
example by police on the beat. These data may be transmitted and compared instantly to
vast databases, allowing the cop on the beat to identify an deadbeat dad, escaped felon,
or international terrorist.
Voter Registration: Establishing the identity of registered voters is vital to help deter
voter fraud and thus increase confidence that elections can’t be stolen. Biometrics can
play a key role in authenticating the identity of voters at the registration booth, at
polling places, and not least in online voting, where no good means of authenticating
identity exists apart from biometrics.
The successful installation of biometric systems in various civilian applications does not
imply that biometrics is a fully solved problem. Table 1 presents the state-of-the-art
error rates of three popular biometric traits. It is clear that there is plenty of scope for
improvement in biometrics. Researchers are not only addressing issues related to
reducing error rates, but they are also looking at ways to enhance the usability of
biometric systems. Biometric systems that operate using any single biometric
characteristic have the following limitations:
1. Noise in sensed data: The sensed data might be noisy or distorted. A fingerprint with a
scar, or a voice altered by cold are examples of noisy data. Noisy data could also be the
result of defective or improperly maintained sensors (e.g., accumulation of dirt on a
fingerprint sensor) or unfavorable ambient conditions (e.g., poor illumination of a user's
face in a face recognition system). Noisy biometric data may be incorrectly matched with
templates in the database (see Figure 1) resulting in a user being incorrectly rejected.
Table: State-of-the-art error rates associated with fingerprint, face, and voice biometric
systems.
Figure 2. Intra-class variation associated with an individual's face image. Due to change
in pose, an appearance-based face recognition system will not be able to match these 3
images successfully, even though they belong to the same individual.
4. Spoof attacks: An impostor may attempt to spoof the biometric trait of a legitimate
enrolled user in order to circumvent the system. This type of attack is especially relevant
when behavioral traits such as signature and voice are used. However, physical traits are
also susceptible to spoof attacks. For example, it has been demonstrated that it is
possible (although difficult and cumbersome and requires the help of a legitimate user)
to construct artificial fingers/fingerprints in a reasonable amount of time to circumvent
a fingerprint verification system.
5. Non-universality: While every user is expected to possess the biometric trait being
acquired, in reality it is possible for a subset of the users to not possess a particular
biometric. A fingerprint biometric system, for example, may be unable to extract
features from the fingerprints of certain individuals, due to the poor quality of the ridges
(see Figure 3). Thus, there is a failure to enroll (FTE) rate associated with using a single
biometric trait. It has been empirically estimated that as much as 4% of the population
may have poor quality fingerprint ridges that are difficult to image with the currently
available fingerprint sensors and result in FTE errors.