Biostation with Mifare Cards

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With all Biometric technologies, there is a balancing act between being able to accurately identify individuals and providing an easy to use and quick biometric reading operation. This balancing act becomes more involved when dealing with larger numbers of people.

In order to provide acceptable levels of accuracy, the tolerance of a biometric reader must be kept low. A lowering of the tolerance threshold will often result in a finger needing to be placed more precisely and being in the same physical condition as when it was originally enrolled. Also, the more people who enrol, the longer the system will take to match the finger with one of the many fingerprint templates stored in memory. In order to overcome such problems with using biometric data only for clocking, a method of verification could be used instead.

Verification

Verification uses a two stage process to identify a person. This could be a pin number + fingerprint read or an ID card + fingerprint read. This method helps to speed up the identification process. The clocking terminal compares the fingerprint read with the biometric data stored against the single record in memory identified by the pin number or card number that has just been provided.

Because the system is now only comparing biometric data on a 1:1 level, not only does the speed increase, but so should the accuracy. The tolerance of the biometric reader can be increased to make it easier to use and more forgiving with regard to where the finger is placed and also the condition of the finger.

If we were to use the Verification method with a Mifare card, then this provides us with further benefits. Up until now, we were considering having to store and maintain biometric templates at each biometric reader terminal that they could use. This is obviously very time-consuming.

Mifare Cards

With a Mifare card, data can actually be read from and written to a memory chip on the card. Therefore we can use the card to store an individual’s fingerprint template. So rather than storing the fingerprint at the biometric reader terminal, it is stored on the Mifare card itself.

When a Mifare card is read by the biometric terminal, not only does it read the card number, but it also reads the biometric fingerprint template. The person then presents their finger to the biometric reader and the terminal compares what it is reading with the template it has just been provided by the Mifare card.

The Mifare card is an extremely popular card in its own right. The Oyster card used on the London Underground for example is a Mifare card. A Mifare card could be used for other purposes too, such as cashless vending and access control. The card can be printed on, using a normal dye-sublimation card printer, so it can also be used as a photo ID card.

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