Scans secure system

Larry Barfield, a project engineer with the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR), recently found himself charged with the task of evaluating fingerprint based biometric security for the US Marine Corps. The marines, although desiring high levels of security, had little experience interfacing older installed technology with new more secure technology. The best way to learn these answers, Barfield determined, was to design and install a six month trial system at a high traffic site. Traditional biometric technology systems collect a user's fingerprint and match this against a database of known fingerprints and associated identities. For a building with multiple entries, each access point must have real time access to a centralised server managing this database. As the number of users increases and there are more entries to check, the time to match increases, as does the probability of a false accept – where the system permits access to a person under the wrong identity, since each user must be checked against all other users in the system. Click here to request this article by email Download a pdf version of the Texas Instruments Tutorial Go to the Texas Instruments website