Digital Signal Processing Biometrics Applications

DSP or Digital Signal Processing is the technology of manipulating analog information that has been obtained from sources such as sound or photography data that have been converted into digital format. It uses complex mathematical formulas to the raw data to form another type of modified output. It uses the compression technique to transmits and display information effectively.

Products such as video conferencing uses complex hardware and software DSP processing. Many of these products have dedicated DSP chips where they are placed into the sound card that provide extra audio processing power to reduce the loading of processing in the CPU. In the total system solution, the DSP technology collects the raw data, process it, compress it, transmit it and display it once again in the various digital display devices.

Digital Signal Processing In Biometrics

Biometrics is the technology used to analyze biological data. Its most recent application is in the area of security where the biological data of a person is used for personal identification and authentication before the person is allowed to proceed to enter a building or do any business transactions. Fingerprint, iris scan and facial features are among some of the human biometrics used.

The development of single chip DSP microcontroller that processes the electrical signals generated by the transducers such as digital camera CCD devices and fingerprint sensors have helped to speed up the processing power and hence make authentication easy and efficient.

One of the industry leader in DSP technology is Texas Instruments which have developed dedicated microcontroller for DSP application. The technology that have been developed in Biometrics are discussed in great details and is a great source of design references for students or even electronics designers who are keen to develop a biometrics based system.

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