Optimal thresholding for key generation based on biometrics

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a novel method for key generation based on biometrics. Given the biometrics, a set of reliable features are extracted. Each feature is compared with multiple thresholds to generate a multi-bit key. By cascading the multi-bit keys, we obtain one bio-key that can be used for security applications. In order to generate a reliable bio-key, an optimal thresholding method is proposed to minimize the authentication error rate, in terms of the false accept rate (FAR) and the false reject rate (FRR). The experimental results show that the proposed approach of key generation is user-friendly and reliable.