What makes up a biometric authentication system?
A basic biometric system is made up of: • a sensor to capture the biometric characteristic • a computer unit to process and eventually save the biometric data • an application, for which the user’s authentication is necessary In detail, the processing unit comprises (see also biometric recognition) • a “feature extraction unit” which filters the uniqueness data out of the raw data coming from the sensor (called biometric sample) and combines them into the biometric feature, • a “comparator” which compares the biometric features with the biometric reference and delivers a “score” value as result, • and a “decision unit” which takes the score value (or values) as well as the threshold to derive a two-valued decision (authorized or non-authorized).
