Biometrics Verification: a Literature Survey

Abstract

Biometric verification refers to an automatic verification of a person based on some specific biometric features derived from his/her physiological and/or behavioral characteristics. A biometric verification system has more capability to reliably distinguish between an authorized person and an imposter than the traditional systems that use a card or a password. In biometrics, a person could be recognized based on who he/she is rather than what he/she has (ID card) or what he/she knows (password). Currently, biometrics finds use in ATMs, computers, security installations, mobile phones, credit cards, health and social services. The future in biometrics seems to belong to the multimodal biometrics (a biometric system using more than one biometric feature) as a unimodal biometric system (biometric system using single biometric feature) has to contend with a number of problems. In this paper, a survey of some of the unimodal biometrics will be presented that are either currently in use across a range of environments or those still in limited use or under development, or still in the research realm.