Performance analysis of smart card-based fingerprint recognition for secure user authentication

Abstract

In the modern electronic world, authentication of a person is an important task in many areas of day-to-day life. Using a biometrics to authenticate a person's identity has several advantages over the present practices of Personal Identification Number stored in smart cards. However, there is an open issue of integrating biometrics into the smart cards. Typical authenticating algorithms by using biometrics may not be executed in real-time on the resource-constrained smart cards. In this paper, we analyse first the performance requirement of the biometric authentication on the smart cards. Then, to satisfy the requirement, we have developed a light-weighted finger recognition algorithm. Finally, we investigate the possibility of integration of the algorithm into the smart card. Based on our simulation results, a smart card can be designed such that the card can encapsulate all the critical information including the biometrics data, and perform all the comparison securely inside the smart card without any data leaking out. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.