Design And Construction Of A Fingerprint Based Exam Hall Authentication

This research Project is to develop fingerprint Based Exam Hall Authentication systems that assist in the elimination of examination impersonation. Up till now, the Namibian Universities (particularly IUM) Examination control board is not using fingerprint as mode of identification, this has resulted in people sitting for examinations for others who collect the result at the end. With the adoption of fingerprint biometric, this will be eliminated as fingerprint identification will also be employed during collection of results and certificates. This target can be mainly decomposed into image preprocessing, feature extraction and feature match. For each sub-task, some classical and up-to-date methods in literatures are analysed. Based on the analysis, an integrated solution for fingerprint recognition is developed for demonstration.

This demonstration program is coded using C programming language for the program, some optimization at coding level and algorithm level are proposed to improve the performance of this fingerprint recognition system. These performance enhancements are shown by experiments conducted upon a variety of fingerprint images. Also, the experiments illustrate the key issues of fingerprint recognition that are consistent with what the available literatures say. Main objective is to eliminate any form impersonation during exam by employing a more secured means of fingerprint biometrics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER ONE

1.1      INTRODUCTION

1.2      BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

1.3      AIM OF THE PROJECT

1.4      PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

1.5      SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

1.6      PROBLEM STATEMENT OF THE PROJECT

1.7      SIGNIFICANCE  OF THE PROJECT

1.8      DEFINITION OF TERMS/VARIABLES USED

CHAPTER TWO

2.0     LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1      REVIEW OF THE STUDY

2.2     REVIEW OF FINGER PRINT

2.3      THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF FINGERPRINTS

2.4      FINGERPRINT RECOGNITION

2.5      PATTERNS OF FINGERPRINT

2.6      TECHNOLOGY USED

2.7      FINGERPRINT MODULE

2.8      MICROCONTROLLER (ATMEGA328)

CHAPTER THREE

3.0     CONSTRUCTION METHODOLOGY

3.1      CONCEPT OF THE PROJECT

3.2      SYSTEM BLOCK DIAGRAM

3.3      OPERATION OF THE SYSTEM

3.4      HARDWARE SPECIFICATION

3.5      SOFTWARE SPECIFICATIONS

3.6      SYSTEM CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

3.7      SYSTEM OPERATION

3.8      LCD DISPLAY

3.9      POWER SUPPLY UNIT

CHAPTER FOUR

SIMULATION/PROTOTYPE, RESULT & ANALYSIS

4.1      SIMULATION

4.2      COLLECTING AND ENROLMENT

4.3      TEMPLATE STORAGE

4.4      COMPARISON AND MATCHING

4.5      AUTHENTICATION PROCESS

4.6      CASING AND PACKAGING

4.7      ASSEMBLING OF SECTIONS

4.8      RESULT

4.9      AUTHENTICATION PROCESS

CHAPTER FIVE

5.1      CONCLUSION

5.2      RECOMMENDATION

5.3      REMARK

5.4      NEW IDEA

5.5      REFERENCES

CHAPTER ONE

1.1                                  INTRODUCTION

Authentication has always been a major challenge in all types of examination. Verification of the authentic candidate is not an easy task, and also it consumes a lot of time and process. This led to the design of Fingerprint based exam hall authentication system that is designed to pass only users verified by their fingerprint scan and block non verified users.

Formal examination can rightly be defined as the assessment of a person‘s Performance, when confronted with a series of questions, problems, or tasks set him/her, in order to ascertain the amount of knowledge that he has acquired, the extent to which he is able to utilize it, or the quality and effectiveness of the skills he/she has developed. During the 19th century, formal written examinations became regular in universities, schools, and other educational institutions. Examinations were also increasingly employed for the selection of recruits to the civil service, and the professions, and to posts in industry and commence. Over the ages, standardized testing has been the most common methodology, yet the validity and credibility of the expanded range of contemporary assessment techniques have been called into question.

There are two types of systems that help automatically establish the identity of a person:

• Authentication (verification) systems and
• Identification systems. In a verification system, a person desired to be identified submits an identity claim to the system, usually via a magnetic stripe card, login name, smart card, etc., and the system either rejects or accepts the submitted claim of identity (Am I who I claim I am?). In an identification system, the system establishes a subject‘s identity (or fails if the subject is not enrolled in the system database) without the subject‘s having to claim an identity (Who am I?). The topic of this paper is channel towards the development of examination impersonation elimination system and this system would strictly do with the unique feature of identification by means of finger print. A verification system based on fingerprints, and the terms verification, authentication, and identification are used in a loose sense and

Accurate automatic personal identification is becoming more and more important to the operation of our increasingly electronically interconnected information society. Traditional automatic personal identification technologies to verify the identity of a person, which use ―Something that you know, such as a personal identification number (PIN), or ―something that you have, such as an identification (ID) card, key, etc., are no longer considered reliable enough to satisfy the security requirements of electronic transactions or differentiate between an authorized person and an impostor who fraudulently acquires the access privilege of the authorized person. Biometrics is a technology that uniquely identifies a person based on his physiological or behavioral characteristics. It relies on ―something that you are to make personal identification and therefore can inherently differentiate between an authorized person and a fraudulent imposter.

1.2                    BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

An examination board is an organization that sets examinations and is responsible for marking them and distributing results. Examination boards have the power to award qualification to students. Most exam boards are running as non-profit organizations. IUM is the first and only private owned University in Namibia, which can offer qualification in variety of discipline and well-structured certificates, High certificates, Diplomas, Honours Degrees, Master degrees and Doctorates in different Disciplines such as Telecommunication, Information Technology, Human Resource, Nursing, Education etc. For IUM to be recognised, Respected and set their standard height, it need to establish a secure methods of registration, verification, identification and authentication to make sure that who registered at the beginning of the year is the one who is going to seat to write that exam.

The systems that are used currently are not secure because it require a student to provide certain physical documents such as student cards, examination admission slip, etc. This types of methods (documents) can be forged by almost anyone in this fast growing computer technology world. Adoption of Fingerprint Based Exam Hall Authentication system that permit only registered student to enter exam hall and block anyone who wasn’t registered.

1.3                            AIM OF THE PROJECT

The main aim of this project is to differentiate between an authorized person(student) and an impostor before entering the examination hall..

1.4                       PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

The purpose of this project is to use the fingerprint identification to authenticate the identity of an individual.

1.5                         SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The system is designed to pass only users verified by their fingerprint scan and block non verified users. Our system consists of a fingerprint scanner connected to a microcontroller circuit. In registration mode the system allows to register upto 20 users and save their identity with respective id numbers in the system memory. After storage the person needs to first scan his finger on the scanner. The microcontroller now checks the persons fingerprint validity. If the fingerprint is authorized the microcontroller now sends a signal to a motor driver. The motor driver now operates a motor to open a gate. This ensures only authorized users are allowed to enter the examination section and un authorized users are not allowed to enter without any human intervention.

This system was implemented using the Proteus and C programming language and also all necessary method of data collection within the reach to ensure the system met up to acceptable standard has been put into consideration. Also this was carried out under close supervision by Engineer Nkrumah for adequate guidance and interpretation of the work as it unfolds

1.7                            PROBLEM STATEMENT

The problems which are encountered in the previous identification systems are:

• Student impersonation
• Insecure authentication of students
• Manual verification of student
• Corruption in Examination System

1.8                                    OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

The objective of this study is as follows:

• To create a system that is capable of tracking impersonators in the examination system using the methodology of finger print
• To reduce rate of corruption in the educational sector and increase the rate of self-confidence on students.
• To demonstrate the possibility of computer technology in the satisfaction of human needs and also enforce strict security measures that ensure unregistered students do not write exams for other registered

1.9                                                                  SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

With the increasing rate of exam malpractices in the educational sectors, the Universities management deserve to inculcate a tight security means to ensure that these activities of exam impersonators stops. The activities of these exam impersonators have seen the educational sector suffer some serious form corruption ranging from registered student, to examination supervisor. So  it best for the educational body to set up strategies and some certain security means to stop this aspect of corruption in the educational sector.

The system uses a finger prints biometrics, this will help ensure that only registered student during registration with their finger prints are allowed into the examination hall. The system would

1.10                                                               DEFINITION OF TERMS/VARIABLES USED

DATABASE: A collection of related information which can be stored and retrieved.

EXAMINATION: A measure for the test of knowledge.

MALPRACTICES: This refers to negligence or misconduct.

IMPERSONATION: General process of acting on behalf of a client.

IMPERSONATOR: A performed skilled at copying the manner or expression of another mime.

FINGER PRINT: An impression on a surface of the curves formed by the ridges on a fingertip.

BIOMETRICS: Is the use of measurable, biological characteristics such as fingerprints, or iris patterns to identify a person to an electronic system.

ELIMINATION: To get rid of.

DESIGN: Is a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects processes, service and their systems in whole life cycles.

SECURITY ACCESS: Permission granted to users base on their identification.

AUTHENTI CATION: The process of identifying someone base on users name or password in security system.

AUTHORIZATION: Act of granting someone the permission to do or take something.