Acoustic ear recognition

Abstract

We investigate how the acoustic properties of the pinna - i.e. the outer flap of the ear- and the ear canal can be used as a biometric. The acoustic properties can be measured relatively easy with an inexpensive sensor and feature vectors can be derived with little effort. Classification results for three platforms are given (headphone, earphone, mobile phone) using noise as an input signal. Furthermore, preliminary results are given for the mobile phone platform where we use music as an input signal. We achieve equal error rates in the order of 1%-5%, depending on the platform that is used to do the measurement. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.