Voice Biometrics over the Internet in the Framework of COST Action 275.

The emerging field of biometric authentication over theInternet requires both robust person authentication and securecomputer network protocols. This paper presents investigations ofvocal biometric person authentication over the Internet, both atthe protocol and authentication robustness levels. As part ofthis study, an appropriate client-server architecture forbiometrics on the Internet is proposed and implemented. It isshown that the transmission of raw biometric data in thisapplication is likely to result in unacceptably long delays inthe process. On the other hand, by using data models (orfeatures), the transmission time can be reduced to an acceptablelevel. The use of encryption/decryption for enhancing the datasecurity in the proposed client-server link and its effects onthe transmission time are also examined. Furthermore, the scopeof the investigations includes an analysis of the effects ofpacket loss and speech coding on speaker verificationperformance. It is experimentally demonstrated that whilst theadverse effects of packet loss can be negligible, the encoding ofspeech, particularly at a low bit rate, can reduce theverification accuracy considerably. The paper details theexperimental investigations conducted and presents an analysisof the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]