Smartphone user identity verification using gait characteristics

Abstract

Smartphone-based biometrics offers a wide range of possible solutions, which could be used to authenticate users and thus to provide an extra level of security and theft prevention. We propose a method for positive identification of smartphone user's identity using user's gait characteristics captured by embedded smartphone sensors (gyroscopes, accelerometers). The method is based on the application of the Random Projections method for feature dimensionality reduction to just two dimensions. Then, a probability distribution function (PDF) of derived features is calculated, which is compared against known user PDF. The Jaccard distance is used to evaluate distance between two distributions, and the decision is taken based on thresholding. The results for subject recognition are at an acceptable level: we have achieved a grand mean Equal Error Rate (ERR) for subject identification of 5.7% (using the USC-HAD dataset). Our findings represent a step towards improving the performance of gait-based user identity verification technologies.