Investigation into a Military Grade, Field Deployable Biometric Identification System

This proposal focuses on the analysis, requirements definition, and methodology for quantitative measurements and testing of a tactical grade, field deployable biometric sensor and identification system. A thorough compilation of the various factors thataffect overall performance of a field deployable biometric system will be conducted. This will include effects of environmental factors, situational factors, technology factors and user considerations pertaining to the biometric sensor. In addition,several system architectures will be developed that are applicable to the deployment of biometric devices in a variety of different field situations and address issues such as methods of storage, encryption and distribution of templates. The results willserve as a requirements specification for the design and development of the next generation of biometric devices that will have both tunable performance accuracies and confidence factors, with False Acceptance and False Rejection error rates of less thanone in a million.Finally, a brief investigation of a multi-biometric solution, based on using ultrasonic imaging, will be performed. This investigation will attempt to collect preliminary data supporting the ability to develop a superior biometric sensor, that meets theestablished performance requirements of a tactical grade, field deployable system, utilizing ultrasonic imaging techniques. The successful outcomes from the work proposed will result in a requirements document that can be used as a design guide by many researchers and product developers of biometric systems in their effort to create the next generation of biometric devicesthat have an order of magnitude increase in accuracy over existing solutions available today. The development of a superior performing biometric for information systems would quickly be adopted for all types of biometric identification applications. The applications are virtually endless and include time and attendance, access control, patientidentification, prisoner tracking systems, and many more. The biometric market is forecasted by market analyst experts such as Frost and Sullivan to be a multi-billion dollar market over the next several years. Much work is needed however by thescientific community to advance the performance and reliability of these systems prior to this market reaching its full potential. A case in point, the FBI has been working for many years on an initiative referred to as NCIC 2000, which requires afingerprint scanner placed in every police car for the purposes of field identification. This program has suffered significant delays because no fingerprint vendor has been able to provide a scanner that can perform adequately in the field environmentexperienced by the police officer, and at the price points needed for this industry. The work done as part of this proposal could be applied to similar analysis for the NCIC 2000 program.