Enhancement in the design of Biometric
Identification System based on
Photoplethysmography data
Girish Rao Salanke N S
Research Scholar, Dept of SCSE.
VIT University, Chennai Campus,
Chennai, India – 600048
girishraosalanke@gmail.com
Dr. Maheswari N
Associate Professor, Dept of SCSE
VIT University, Chennai Campus,
Chennia,India-600048
maheswari.n@vit.ac.in
Dr. Andrews Samraj
Director,
Advance Science & Technology Research Center,
Salem, India - 636001
andrewsmalacca@gmail.com
S.Sadhasivam
Asst.Professor, Mahendra Engineering College,
Tiruchengode, India.
sivam.sadha@gmail.com
Abstract - In the recent years, automated security systems
have become one of the major concerns. Secure and reliable
authentication of a person is in great demand. In this paper, we
propose the applicability of Photoplethysmograph (PPG) signal
for human identification. Fourier series analysis and Semi
Discrete Decomposition methods are applied to extract the
features that appear to offer excellent discrimination among
subjects. The main obstacle while analysing a PPG signal is the
presence of noise, contaminated by motion artifact. The proposed
method exhibits good identification accuracies not just with the
normal PPG signals, but also with the motion artifact PPG signal.
Keywords - Photoplethysmograph (PPG), Motion Artifact,
Fourier series Analysis, Semi Discrete Decomposition (SDD),
Biometrics.
I. INTRODUCTION
Biometrics is a science of identifying a person using his
physiological and/or behavioural characteristics[1].
Traditional biometrics like fingerprint[4], palmprint[13],
face[8] and iris[5] have common weakness in their
vulnerability to spoofing and even some of the other traits can
be used if the person is dead. Such problems can be solved
using signals like EEG[9], ECG[11] and PPG[2]. PPG signals
have been used extensively in clinical diagnosis for many
years. It has been recently suggested by the research
communities that PPG signal can also be used as a biometric
for human identification recognition. Most of the PPG
biometrics work reported earlier [6][14]assumed that the PPG
signal is free from motion artifact.
In most environments the PPG signal is contaminated by
motion artifact and surrounding light variation luring
recordings. Changes in surrounding light can be rejected using
the emission of modulation of signals from an infrared emitter.
The most troublesome problem with PPG signal while
developing an authentication system is the motion artifact.
These artifacts arise mainly as a result of the air gap between
the sensor and the skin which leads to poor estimation of
physiological parameters from the recording. Motion artifact
is mainly low frequency interference and it is random in
nature. Even a slight movement by the subject while recording
would then invariably disturb the contact between the sensor
and the subject’s body, corresponding the PPG signal obtained
during such periods to be corrupt with motion artifacts.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2
deals with theoretical framework and section 3 presents the
methodology. Section 4 presents the results & discussion.
Finally, Section 5 contains the conclusion.
II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A. Fundamentals of PPG Signal
PPG signals provide a non-invasive and accurate
methodology to obtain valuable physiological information
such as blood oxygen saturation, heart rate and blood flow.
The blood in human body is being pumped from the heart
to all parts in the body by blood vessels called arteries. Blood
pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of the
arteries. Each time the heart beats it pumps out a considerable
volume of blood to the arteries. Systolic pressure which is the
highest blood pressure occurs when heart is in pumping
motion. Diastolic pressure is lowest blood pressure when heart
is in resting[7].Since blood pressures are an indirect
measurement of heart beats and the blood pressure tends to
change according to the time and emotion. For instance, blood
pressure will rise when a subject is awaken and excited. The
unit for measurement of blood pressure is in mmHg and the
notation will be systolic followed by diastolic pressure. The
Photoplethysmograph (PPG) signals reflect the change in
blood volume caused by blood vessel expansion and
Proceedings of 2013 International Conference on Green High Performance Computing March 14-15, 2013, India
978-1-4673-2594-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE ICGHPC 2013