Biometrics Technology

Biometrics refers to the identification of a person on the basis of their physical and behavioural characteristics. Today we know a lot of biometric systems which are based on the identification of these, for everyone's unique identity. Some biometric systems include the characteristics of: fingerprints, hand geometry, voice, iris, etc., and can be used for identification. Most biometric systems are based on the collection and comparison of biometric characteristics which can provide identification.

This study begins with a historical review of biometric and radio frequency identification (RFID) methods and research areas. The study continues in the direction of biometric methods based on fingerprints. The survey parameters of reliability, which may affect the results of the biometric system in use, prove the hypothesis. A summary of the results obtained the measured parameters of reliability and the efficiency of the biometric system we discussed. Each biometric system includes the following three processes: registration, preparation of a sample, and readings of the sample. Finally the system provides a comparison of the measured sample with digitized samples stored in the database.

Personal identification is a means of associating a particular individual with an identity. The term “biometrics” derives from Bio,(meaning “life” and metric being a “measurement”. Variations of biometrics have long been in use in past history. Cave paintings were one of the earliest samples of a biometric form. A signature could presumably be decifered from the outline of a human hand in some of the paintings. In ancient China, thumb prints were found on clay seals. In the 14th century in China, biometrics was used to identify children to merchants (Daniel, 2006). The merchants would take ink and make an impression of the child’s hand and footprint in order to distinguish between them. French police developed the first anthropometric system in 1883 to identify criminals by measuring the head and body widths and lengths. Fingerprints were used for business transactions in ancient Babylon, on clay tablets (Barnes, 2011). Throughout history many other forms of biometrics, which include the fingerprint technique, were utilized to identify criminals and these are still in use today. The fingerprint method has been successfully used for many years in law enforcement and is now a very accurate and reliable method to determine an individual’s identity in many security access systems.

Biometrics is not really a new technology. With the evolution of computer science the consecutive manner in which we can now use these unique features with the aid of computers contemporaneousness. In the future, modern computers will aid biometric technology playing a critical role in our society to assist questions related to the identity of individuals in a global world.

“Who is this person?”, “Is this the person he/she claims to be?”, “Should this individual be given access to our system or building?”, etc. These are examples of the every day questions asked by many organizations in the fields of telecommunication, financial services, health care, electronic commerce, governments and others all over the world. The requirements and needs of quantity data and information processing are growing by the day. Also, people’s global mobility is becoming an everyday matter as is the necessity to ensure modern and discreet identification systems from different real and virtual access points on a global basis.

In order to adopt biometric technologies such as fingerprint, iris, face, hand geometry and voice etc., we will evaluate some factors including the ease of use, error rate and cost. When researcher evaluate the score for each of the biometric technologies, we find that there is a range between the upper and lower scores for each item evaluated. Therefore we have to recognize that there is no perfect biometric technology. For example, if a biometric system uses fingerprint technology, we will determine several factors as follows:

a. What is the error rate (ER), as we use the False Acceptance Rate (FAR) or False Rejection Rate (FRR) that the system will allow?

b. False Acceptance Rate (FAR) is the probability that a biometrics verification device will fail to reject an impostor.

c. False Rejection Rate (FRR) is the probability that a biometrics verification device will fail to recognize the identity, or verify the claimed identity, of an enrolee.

d. What is the security level (SL) to protect privacy and fraud that the system will require?

e. Which environmental conditions (EC) for sensing fingerprints will be considered as dry or wet and dusty on the glass of a fingerprint scanner?

In the last ten years, new identification systems have been achieving extremely rapid development. The evolution of microelectronics has enabled practical application in the branch of automation of logistics and production. It is necessary to research and justify every economic investment in these applications. In this work the most important quantitative characteristics of reliability are explained. The authors also show the methodology for defining the reliability and efficacy of biometric identification systems in the process of identification and provide experimental research of personal identification systems1 based upon reliability and efficacy parameters. Furthermore, a real identification system was upgraded based on automation and informatization.