Multibiometrics for Identity Authentication: Issues, Benefits and Challenges

Multi biometric systems exploit different biometric traits, multiple samples and multiple algorithms to establish the identity of an individual. Over any single biometric system, they have the advantage of increasing the population coverage, offering user choice, making biometric authentication systems more reliable and resilient to spoofing, and most importantly, improving the authentication performance. However, both the design and deployment of multi biometric systems raise many issues. These include system architecture, fusion methodology, selection of component biometric experts based on their accuracy and diversity, measurement of their quality, reliability and competence, as well as overall system usability, and economic viability. These issues will be addressed and possible ways forward discussed.