Last Night! my sister called me up and asked how does the biometric systems work, and she wanted to understand it before buying a biometric device and start working with it on a project.

 

so, i wrote a whitepaper over how biometrics work, here is an excerpt of the same......

 

 

 

There are actually 3 phases in the lifetime of an application meant to work with any kind of biometric technology

 

1. Installation and configuration of the biometric device
2. Initialization of device on the basis of parameters
3. Passing your biometric data and matching with the biometric print of device

 

 

I’ll discuss each step one by one in detail

 

But prior to this you need something to work with, and these are:-

 

1. A biometric device.
2. A signing dll, which can be incorporated with your application, so that you can use its functions to initialize the device, enroll the users with the device, prepare the user database, and later use the same database for login etc.

 

Now, let us get on with our discussion

 

Installation and configuration of the biometric device

 

Any biometric device when installed in your system must follow a procedure, in which your application initializes the device and then enrolls the users with it. You can either call it enroll or simply you can call it “Configure”.

 

Enrollment is a procedure in which your device makes a database of user and user’s PRINT. User is nothing but an id, but User’s PRINT is something interesting, to understand the print you can also compare and say it’s the FingerPrint (Which is unique), but see is it always possible that the angle with which your biometric device might be taking the picture of your finger will always be the same, obviously NOT, so what you need is not the picture but some other smart information about the USER’S PRINT.

 

For ex –

 

When you enroll a user with the system, you store his / her name and a character based password (in case something goes bad with that biometric identity, like your finger is hurt).

And then your device asks for your user’s Print, a PRINT is nothing but a Defer data structure A defer data st. is not made at one go, so what it asks for is to user to give his print at least 3 times to the device, as 3 times is enough to collect all the possible sets of that biometric identity (which could be your face, fingerprint, eyes, speech). You can say user is training the device to understand him / her.

 

 

 

 

Now let us see how a defer data st. might look like

 

 

User Name brij raj singh      Password    momitaraj

 

Defer ds1

 

20,30	50,75	64,76	98,104	65,328
45,34	64,76	19,38	50,75	67,57
24,67	98,104	98,104	20,30	65,328
63,54	39,32	64,76	64,76	39,57

 

Defer  ds2

 

20,30	70,79	65,328	98,104	50,75
45,34	64,72	67,57	50,75	64,76
24,67	28,102	65,328	20,30	98,104
63,54	39,32	39,57	64,76	39,32

 

Defer ds3

 

20,30	50,75	64,76	98,104	65,328
45,34	64,76	19,38	50,75	67,57
24,67	98,104	98,104	20,30	65,328
63,54	39,32	64,76	64,76	39,57

 

 

So when a user gives his identity 3 times to the device for ascertaining his / her identity, the device actually creates these 3 data structures.

 

 

Initialization of device on the basis of parameters

 

Device initialization is pretty straight forward by calling some simple API’s and then the device waits for the event of user’s print by user, till the user provides his / her print to the device.

 

Passing your biometric data and matching with the biometric print of device

 

When the user provides a PRINT to the device, the device again makes a defer ds and then matches this defer ds with the earlier provided defer ds for the users existing in the database, now this process is pretty critical, and because we have 3 defer ds for one user, it’s very much possible that though the user is genuine but the defer ds doesn’t match with either one of them.

 

There is a simple yet effective way to solve this problem, and that is

 

Make Hash keys for all the 9 combinations possible, and when the user provides his defer ds, make its hash key and match it up with the defer ds hash keys already with you.

 

This is how the device actually works but if you are buying a commercial Biometric device they usually come with an API set which you can always plug in and use without thinking how it works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday to me !

 

While I am writing this, a biological clock is ticking inside me, and indicating that it’s been 26 yrs, since it started ticking.

 

You know, its not counting progressive, it’s actually doing a countdown.

 

I have entered a phase of life which calls for hard work, love, passion, traveling, sex, bad things trying to lure me, money (Less or More), choices for what I need and what I want, Family or career, Home country or some other developed nation many such things are going to come up against me, and I will have to either chose or follow my spirit to let me do it.

 

This all might sometime put me in problems, sometime it might make me feel wise, but the challenge will remain, this challenge is not professional, not personal, it’s not only me who is thrown against this challenge, all of us are going through it, and it’s LIFE, the challenge is to survive.

 

On the eve of today, I will celebrate my 26 yrs of survival, and here I wish myself

 

1. May God give me strength to survive long.
2. May God give me strength to give away my entirety, when someone needs to survive over cost of my survival, may I become selfless to serve the soul of humanity.
3. May I find love and may I give my love to someone who actually needs it.
4. May I give something to this earth which could come at use for the lives of people.

 

You say Ameen! And I will sing "Happy Birthday to me!"