Biometrics

BIOMETRICS

 Biometric authentication system capture the user‘s characteristics with a sensor, derive characteristic values, and compare this with a known reference. The result of the comparison is either 0, if the authentication was not successfully performed, or 1, if authentication was successfully performed. The image system gets the bifurcation points of finger line and compare with the existing one stored in the system. Concept is shown in the Fig.

1. Operating system

The core functionality of every pervasive computing device is determined by its operating system.

The major differences of operating systems for pervasive devices from the user's point of view are the human-machine interface, and the speed with which a task can be performed.

For pervasive devices, there will likely be no equivalent to the Windows/Intel monopoly in the near future because pervasive devices do have a wide range of usages (from mobile phones to set-top boxes) with very constrained hardware

2. Palm OS:

Suitable and easy to use operating system for PDAs, optimized restricted features are available which leads to lower memory and CPU usage which results in longer battery life.Features: Enhanced Communication Support and Multimedia with Mobile Phones

1.User Management:

Single user operating system

2.Task Management:

One application runs at a time and can call other applications.

3.Power Management:

Power modes (sleep, doze and running)

4.OS size:

OS 3.5 is about 1.4 MB.

User Interface:

It recognizes only the palm handwriting alphabets, one button access to applications; minimize taps for often used operations.

Memory Management:

Applications should be well tested since if one application crashes then the system crashes. Thus memory is divided into dynamic heap which is execution based and clears on reset and storage is designed to hold permanent data.

Software can be developed with both C and C++ in Palm OS.

3. EPOC:

The EPOC operating system was designed specifically for phones. There are two versions: EPOC16 for 16-bit processors and EPOC32 for 32-bit processors.

Core operating system functionality:

Heavily Multitasking.  

The base layer provides the fundamental APIs.  

The  middleware  layer  provides  the  graphics,  data,  and  other  components  to

support the graphical user interface and applications.  

EIKON is the system graphical user interface framework.  

User Management:

Single user operating system

Task management

Provides multitasking with a pre-emptive, priority-driven scheduler.

User interface

The EPOC user interface supports display, keyboard, and sound. . It is also responsible for handling the data and command input. Figure shows the EPOC user interface of an Ericsson device with a map application.

Memory management

EPOC has a memory management unit (MMU) concept to provide separate address spaces for each application. These tools include design patterns, stack clean-up heap failure, and heap-checking tools.

Programming languages supported by EPOC are C++, Java and OPL. C++ used to develop system development and high performance application programming.

4. Window CE:

Windows CE      is an embedded operating system developed        by Microsoft.

Windows CE 3.0 offers real-time support, a smart card subsystem for PC/SC compliant readers, is Unicode based, and supports grayscale and color graphics up to 32-bit depth. Windows CE is a modular operating system that can be configured by the device manufacturer. This is a result of the read-only memory (ROM)-based design of Windows CE, in contrast to more desktop-oriented, disk-based operating systems like Linux or BeOS. It can even be configured at runtime.

The kernel provides memory management, task scheduling, and interrupt handling.

The graphics/window/event manager (GWE) integrates the user interface functions of graphical output and user input.  

The object store is the persistent memory of Windows CE and includes files, the registry, and a database.  

Finally, the communication interfaces include infrared communication via IrDA,

TCP/IP, and serial drivers.  

User management:

Because Windows CE is designed for PDAs, it supports only one user.

`Task management:

The task manager supports 32 simultaneous processes and an unlimited number of threads.

Operating system size:

The Windows CE footprint can be as small as 400 kb for the kernel, up to 3 MB with all modules, and up to 8 MB including Pocket Word and Internet Explorer.

User interface:

Windows CE provides menu controls, dialog boxes, an: icons, and supports sound.

Memory management:

A protected virtual memory system that supports up to 32 MB memory per process protects applications against each other. There exists a special heap for the file system, registry, and object store that has a transaction service for ensuring data integrity. The object store can have a size up to 256 MB.

     Security: Windows CE has support for cryptography with a cryptographic library (Cryptographic Application Programming Interface, CAPI) to securely store information in memory. The kernel-loader authentication program can use public-key signatures to prevent unauthorized applications from running. Access to the data, however, will be slower because of the electrically erasable and programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) memory used instead of battery-backed RAM.  

  Software development for Windows CE

Since Windows CE is based on the Win32 API development tools, such as Visual C++ or Visual Basic, available for this API.

5. QNX Neutrino:

QNX is a real time operating system consisting of microkernel surrounded by a collection of optimal processes that provides UNIX based system services. Due to microkernel architecture even if the file system driver or network driver crashes, still the system will work which leads to stable system. QNX is very well suitable for car devices.

User management:

QNX supports single user.

Task management:

Supports real multitasking.

User interface:

Consist of micro graphical user interfaces and widgets for easy interface.

Memory management:

QNX has an MMU concept for separation of address space of applications. Different application runs on different threads.

Software development for QNX is in C language.

6. Be OS:

Be OS is highly optimized for multimedia application. It posses sound and graphic processor. It deals with 64 bit file system

The architecture is based on a symmetric multi processor model, allowing each processor full access to resources and also it provides pre-emptive multitasking and pervasive mulltithreading (rapind switching between several task).

User management:

It supports multiuser as like standard operating system.

Task management:

Pre-emptive multitasking by pervasive threads enables the task management much speeder.

Memory management:

Provides memory protection between applications and virtual memory support.

Software development is done using C/C++.

7. Embedded Linux:

Embedded Linux is a stripped down operating system with special support to pervasive devices. Mainly used for handheld devices.

The core features are Configurable kernel, Scalability and Networking.

User management:

It supports multiuser as like standard operating system.

Task management:

Preemptive multitasking with optional real time scheduler is implemented.

Operating System Size:

Depending on the configuration, the size of the kernel can range from 200 KB to several megabytes.

User Interface:

x-Window system for user interface and have striped down version to save memory.

Memory management:

Supports MMUs to provide memory protection between applications and virtual memory for paging memory to hard disc.

Software development is done using C/C++ and JAVA.