Development of Heartbeat Detection Kit for Biometric Authentication System

Automated security is one of the major concerns in modern time where secure and reliable authentication is in great demand. However, traditional authentication methods such as password and smart card are now outdated because they can be lost, stolen and shared. In this project, biometric system based on heartbeat signals which is also known as Electrocardiographic (ECG) signals is proposed. Heartbeat is chosen as modality due to an individual's ECG signals cannot be faked. Compared to fingerprint it can be fooled with fake fingers, face can be extracted using user's photo and voice can be imitated conveniently. As ECG signals are reflection of the mechanical movement of the heart, these features contain unique physiological information which make them a promising authentication technology. In this study, we develop a portable ECG detection kit for data acquisition. The prototype has successfully tested as a wearable bracelet heartbeat detection for personal system log in. For the software part, wavelet transform algorithm is used as feature extraction technique while for the classification process Support Vector Machine (SVM) is employed. Consequently, the whole system is then integrated on Intel Embedded N2600 Processor with Altera Cyclone IV FPGA Board (DE2-150) as biometric system. Experiment results showed that 2.0069% of EER performance has been achieved, thus this shows that the developed prototype can be a promising modality for biometric system.