Hardware-software co-design of an automatic fingerprint acquisition system

Nature has provided human beings unique and different each one in relation to the others; even ´identical´ twins have infinite differences between them. Every individual has his own biological characteristics that allow him to be distinguished from the rest of the humanity. In recent years, biometrics and computer technology have joined together in order to improve the security in everyday activities such as access control systems, cash terminals, public transport, internet, smart card readers... where user identification/authentication is required before giving him access to confidential information, relevant places or restricted resources. In any situation where rapid, accurate, reliable and secure identification or authentication of an individual is required, electronics and biometrics take place. With biometrics-based security systems there is no longer any need to remember a large number of PINs and passwords, so the genuine biometric characteristics of every individual play the role of personal identity code in front of the world. The first stage in these identification systems is the biometric characteristic acquisition. The authors focus their work on that field in the specific case of using fingerprints as biometric feature. A good solution is detailed from a ´performance vs cost´ point-of-view.