This doctoral dissertation presents the research and development process in the field of access control systems based on iris recognition. Due to several positive biometric properties of the human eye, the iris recognition technology offers one of the highest security levels among similar access control modalities.
A prototype of an access control device based on iris recognition was developed, featuring an
algorithm for sharp eye image acquisition. The device automatically detects and illuminates the user’s eye when it is positioned at a distance of 10 cm from the camera and captures an image. The cylinder-shaped device, measuring only 40 mm × 40 mm × 40 mm can easily be integrated into any electronic door in a smart city, once all iris recognition phases are implemented. During the development of the device, the V-model design approach was followed. This design is based on the requirement specification document. The inputs for this document were gathered from a market competition overview and existing scientific state-of-the-art developments in the field of iris recognition and its implementations on various embedded systems. Before development began, the functional specification of the device was specified. This formed the basis for the risk management process and the specification of the device’s architecture. Next, the developed hardware equipment and a description of the implemented algorithm for sharp eye image acquisition are presented. The algorithm is based on simultaneous visible and infrared illumination and real-time digital signal processing of a color image sensor with no infrared filter.
The performance of any iris recognition system depends significantly on the quality of the
captured eye image. Therefore, research to assess the performance of the developed image
acquisition subsystem was conducted. One hundred images of eyes from fifty volunteers were acquired using the developed device. The measured average acquisition time was 1.65 seconds. The Failure to Enroll rate of the device, based on the proposed iris image quality metric, was 39 %.
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