Cheng Po Sum. / Thesis submitted in: July 2003. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-67). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / List of Figures --- p.i / List of Tables --- p.iii / Acknowledgments --- p.iv / 摘要 --- p.v / Thesis Abstract --- p.vi / Chapter 1. --- Mobile Commerce --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Introduction to Mobile Commerce --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Mobile commence payment systems --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Security in mobile commerce --- p.5 / Chapter 2. --- Mobile authentication using Fingerprint --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1 --- Authentication basics --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2 --- Fingerprint basics --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- Fingerprint authentication using mobile device --- p.15 / Chapter 3. --- Design of Mobile Fingerprint Authentication Device --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1 --- Objectives --- p.19 / Chapter 3.2 --- Hardware and software design --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Choice of hardware platform --- p.21 / Chapter 3.3 --- Experiments --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Design methodology I - DSP --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3.1.1 --- Hardware platform --- p.25 / Chapter 3.3.1.2 --- Software platform --- p.26 / Chapter 3.3.1.3 --- Implementation --- p.26 / Chapter 3.3.1.4 --- Experiment and result --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Design methodology II ´ؤ SoC --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3.2.1 --- Hardware components --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3.2.2 --- Software components --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3.2.3 --- Implementation Department of Computer Science and Engineering --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3.2.4 --- Experiment and result --- p.30 / Chapter 3.4 --- Observation --- p.30 / Chapter 4. --- Implementation of the Device --- p.31 / Chapter 4.1 --- Choice of platforms --- p.31 / Chapter 4.2 --- Implementation Details --- p.31 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Hardware implementation --- p.31 / Chapter 4.2.1.1 --- Atmel FingerChip --- p.32 / Chapter 4.2.1.2 --- Gemplus smart card and reader --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Software implementation --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2.2.1 --- Operating System --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2.2.2 --- File System --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2.2.3 --- Device Driver --- p.35 / Chapter 4.2.2.4 --- Smart card --- p.38 / Chapter 4.2.2.5 --- Fingerprint software --- p.41 / Chapter 4.2.2.6 --- Graphical user interface --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3 --- Results and observations --- p.44 / Chapter 5. --- An Application Example 一 A Penalty Ticket Payment System (PTPS) --- p.47 / Chapter 5.1 --- Requirement --- p.47 / Chapter 5.2 --- Design Principles --- p.48 / Chapter 5.3 --- Implementation --- p.52 / Chapter 5.4 --- Results and Observation --- p.57 / Chapter 6. --- Conclusions and future work --- p.62 / Chapter 7. --- References --- p.64

Basic technologies for fingerprint feature extraction and matching have been improved to such a stage that they can be embedded into commercial Automatic Fingerprint Verification Systems (AFVSs). However, the reliability of AFVSs has kept attracting concerns from the society since AFVSs do fail occasionally due to difficulties like problematic fingers, changing environments, and malicious attacks. Furthermore, the absence of a solid theoretical foundation for evaluating AFVSs prevents these failures from been predicted and evaluated. Under the traditional empirical AFVS evaluation framework, repeated verification experiments, which can be very time consuming, have to be performed to test whether an update to an AFVS can really lead to an upgrade in its performance. Also, empirical verification results are often unable to provide deeper understanding of AFVSs. To solve these problems, we propose a novel statistical evaluation model for minutiae-based AFVSs based on the understanding of fingerprint minutiae patterns. This model can predict the verification performance metrics as well as their confidence intervals. The analytical power of our evaluation model, which makes it superior to empirical evaluation methods, can assist system developers to upgrade their AFVSs purposefully. Also, our model can facilitate the theoretical analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of various fingerprint verification techniques. We verify our claims through different and extensive experiments. / Chen, Jiansheng. / "November 2006." / Adviser: Yiu-Sang Moon. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-08, Section: B, page: 5343. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-122). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / O presente estudo foi realizado, com o objetivo de aplicar a tÃcnica de PCR em seqÃÃncias palindrÃmicas extragÃnicas repetidas (REP-PCR) no monitoramento da qualidade do leite de cabra, atravÃs da detecÃÃo de Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa e Streptococcus spp., em amostras de mÃos de ordenhadores, tetos das cabras, leite, ordenhadeira e Ãgua, para o futuro estabelecimento e implantaÃÃo do sistema de AnÃlise de Perigos e Pontos CrÃticos de Controle (APPCC). Verificou-se vÃrios fingerprints de todos os isolados coletados das diferentes fontes estudadas (mÃos de ordenhadores, tetos das cabras, leite, ordenhadeira e Ãgua). Observou-se comportamentos muito similares das bandas indicando que os isolados podem ser relatados como clones epidemiolÃgicos. A Ãgua sem tratamento, utilizada para a lavagem das mÃos dos ordenhadores, caracterizou-se como um ponto crÃtico de controle (PCC), pois se destaca como iniciador de contaminaÃÃo nas amostras Streptococcus spp., Escherichia coli e Pseudomonas aeruginosa,. Outro PCC seria as mÃos do ordenhador, pois nas amostras de Staphylococcus aureus, aparece tambÃm como indicador de contaminaÃÃo. A tÃcnica demonstrou ser eficiente para a anÃlise da similaridade entre indivÃduos da mesma espÃcie, no caso, do Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus spp., Escherichia coli e Pseudomonas aeruginosa, sendo, portanto, uma ferramenta Ãtil para investigaÃÃo de falhas no manejo e consequentemente, na busca de um controle mais eficiente para evitar ou minimizar a disseminaÃÃo de microrganismos patogÃnicos causadores de sÃrias enfermidades em humanos e animais, que muitas vezes podem ser transmitidas atravÃs de produtos como o leite e seus derivados. / The present study was carried out, with the objective of applying the PCR technique in repetitive extragenic palindromic (REP-PCR) sequences in the monitoring of the quality of goat milk, through the detection of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptococcus spp., in samples of milking handlers, goats teats, milk, milk machine and water, for the future establishment and implantation of the system of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP). Several fingerprints was verified of all the isolates collected of the different studied sources (milking handlers, goats teats, milk, milk machine and water). It was observed very similar behaviors of the bands indicating that the isolates can be related as epidemic clones. The water without treatment, used for the wash milking handlers, it was characterized as a critical point of control (PCC), because stands out as starter contamination in the Streptococcus spp., Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa samples. Another PCC would be the hands of the milking handlers, because in the Staphylococcus aureus samples, it is also appears as initial point of contamination. The technique demonstrated to be efficient for the similarity analysis among individuals of the same species, in case, of the Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus spp., Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, being, therefore, an useful tool for investigation of fails on management and consequently, in the search of more efficient control to avoid or to minimize the spread of pathogenic microorganisms that cause serious illnesses in humans and animals, and can be transmitted through products as the milk and your products.

Personal identification of individuals is becoming increasingly adopted in society today. Due to the large number of electronic systems that require human identification, faster and more secure identification systems are pursued. Biometrics is based upon the physical characteristics of individuals; of these the fingerprint is the most common as used within law enforcement. Fingerprint-based systems have been introduced into the society but have not been well received due to relatively high rejection rates and false acceptance rates. This limited acceptance of fingerprint identification systems requires new techniques to be investigated to improve this identification method and the acceptance of the technology within society. Electronic fingerprint identification provides a method of identifying an individual within seconds quickly and easily. The fingerprint must be captured instantly to allow the system to identify the individual without any technical user interaction to simplify system operation. The performance of the entire system relies heavily on the quality of the original fingerprint image that is captured digitally. A single fingerprint scan for verification makes it easier for users accessing the system as it replaces the need to remember passwords or authorisation codes. The identification system comprises of several components to perform this function, which includes a fingerprint sensor, processor, feature extraction and verification algorithms. A compact texture feature extraction method will be implemented within an embedded microprocessor-based system for security, performance and cost effective production over currently available commercial fingerprint identification systems. To perform these functions various software packages are available for developing programs for windows-based operating systems but must not constrain to a graphical user interface alone. MATLAB was the software package chosen for this thesis due to its strong mathematical library, data analysis and image analysis libraries and capability. MATLAB enables the complete fingerprint identification system to be developed and implemented within a PC environment and also to be exported at a later date directly to an embedded processing environment. The nucleus of the fingerprint identification system is the feature extraction approach presented in this thesis that uses global texture information unlike traditional local information in minutiae-based identification methods. Commercial solid-state sensors such as the type selected for use in this thesis have a limited contact area with the fingertip and therefore only sample a limited portion of the fingerprint. This limits the number of minutiae that can be extracted from the fingerprint and as such limits the number of common singular points between two impressions of the same fingerprint. The application of texture feature extraction will be tested using variety of fingerprint images to determine the most appropriate format for use within the embedded system. This thesis has focused on designing a fingerprint-based identification system that is highly expandable using the MATLAB environment. The main components that are defined within this thesis are the hardware design, image capture, image processing and feature extraction methods. Selection of the final system components for this electronic fingerprint identification system was determined by using specific criteria to yield the highest performance from an embedded processing environment. These platforms are very cost effective and will allow fingerprint-based identification technology to be implemented in more commercial products that can benefit from the security and simplicity of a fingerprint identification system.

L'objectif de la thèse est d'améliorer la précision de localisation des personnes (ou objets) dans les environnements où le signal GPS est faible, voire inexistant, par exemple à l'intérieur de bâtiments. L'originalité de ce travail est d'utiliser des signaux radio reçus de sources extérieures pour effectuer la localisation à l'intérieur des bâtiments. Durant ce travail, des mesures des puissances reçues ont été effectuées dans diverses conditions. Étant données les difficultés liées aux processus expérimentaux (incertitude et bruit liés aux mesures), ce dernier point a constitué une première partie de ce travail de thèse. Le traitement et l'interprétation des mesures des puissances de signaux radio dans un environnement de propagation instable ont été un véritable défi durant cette étude. En effet, toutes les porteuses du réseau GSM ont été considérées et aucune hypothèse n'a été posée, à priori, sur leurs pertinences. Une seconde partie de la thèse a été justement consacrée à l'estimation de ces pertinences. Le problème de la détermination de la pièce dans laquelle se trouve le mobile a été considéré comme un problème de classification automatique : des méthodes d'apprentissage statistique (supervisé et semi‐supervisé) ont donc été mises en oeuvre. Le choix des méthodes utilisées a été fait sur la base des études menées sur les mesures des puissances. Des performances très satisfaisantes ont été obtenues, dans les pièces de deux bâtiments différents. Ces résultats ont ainsi confirmé l'apport des méthodes d'apprentissage statistique au problème de localisation par fingerprints.

A rapidly melting ice sheet produces a distinctive geometry of sea level (SL) change. Thus, a network of SL observations may, in principle, be used to infer sources of meltwater flux. We outline a new method, based on a Kalman smoother, for using tide gauge observations to estimate the individual sources of global SL change. The Kalman smoother technique iteratively calculates the maximum likelihood estimate of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheet melt rates at each time step, and it allows for data gaps while also permitting the estimation of non-linear trends. We have also implemented a fixed multi-model Kalman filter that allows us to rigorously account for additional contributions to SL changes, such as glacial isostatic adjustment and thermal expansion. We report on a series of detection experiments based on synthetic SL data that explore the feasibility of extracting source information from SL records before applying the new methodology to historical tide gauge records. In the historical tide gauge study we infer a global mean SL rise of ~1.5 ± 0.5 mm/yr up to 1970, followed by an acceleration to a rate of ~2.0 ± 0.5 mm/yr in 2008. In addition to its connection to SL, Greenland and its large ice sheet act as a barrier to storm systems traversing the North Atlantic. As a result of the interaction with Greenland, low-pressure systems located in the Irminger Sea, between Iceland and Greenland, often produce strong low-level winds. Through a combination of modeling and the analysis of rare in-situ observations, we explore the evolution of a lee cyclone that resulted in three high-speed-wind events in November 2004. Understanding Greenland’s role in these events is critical in our understanding of local weather in this region.

A novel algorithm for fingerprint template formation and matching in automatic fingerprint recognition has been developed. At present, fingerprint is being considered as the dominant biometric trait among all other biometrics due to its wide range of applications in security and access control. Most of the commercially established systems use singularity point (SP) or ‘core’ point for fingerprint indexing and template formation. The efficiency of these systems heavily relies on the detection of the core and the quality of the image itself. The number of multiple SPs or absence of ‘core’ on the image can cause some anomalies in the formation of the template and may result in high False Acceptance Rate (FAR) or False Rejection Rate (FRR). Also the loss of actual minutiae or appearance of new or spurious minutiae in the scanned image can contribute to the error in the matching process. A more sophisticated algorithm is therefore necessary in the formation and matching of templates in order to achieve low FAR and FRR and to make the identification more accurate. The novel algorithm presented here does not rely on any ‘core’ or SP thus makes the structure invariant with respect to global rotation and translation. Moreover, it does not need orientation of the minutiae points on which most of the established algorithm are based. The matching methodology is based on the local features of each minutiae point such as distances to its nearest neighbours and their internal angle. Using a publicly available fingerprint database, the algorithm has been evaluated and compared with other benchmark algorithms. It has been found that the algorithm has performed better compared to others and has been able to achieve an error equal rate of 3.5%.

Τα Αποτυπώματα αποτελούν μια κομψή και αποτελεσματική λύση στο Πρόβλημα της Ισότητας στην Πολυπλοκότητα Επικοινωνίας. Τα Κβαντικά τους αντίστοιχα είναι ένα παράδειγμα της εκθετικής μείωσης στο κόστος επικοινωνίας που είναι εφικτή όταν χρησιμοποιείται κβαντική αντί για κλασσική πληροφορία. Το πλεονέκτημα αυτό οδήγησε σε αρκετά χρόνια έρευνας με ενδιαφέροντα αποτελέσματα. Επιπλέον, πρόσφατες δημοσιεύσεις υποδεικνύουν αποδοτικούς τρόπους για πειραματική υλοποίηση των Κβαντικών Αποτυπωμάτων. Τέλος, τα Κβαντικά Αποτυπώματα αποδεικνύονται ισχυρά εργαλεία στο χώρο της Κβαντικής Κρυπτογραφίας, επειδή διαθέτουν δυνατότητα αξιόπιστης απόκρυψης πληροφορίας. Σε αυτήν την εργασία εξετάζουμε τα Κβαντικά Αποτυπώματα στο πλαίσιο της Κβαντικής Κρυπτογραφίας και διερευνούμε τη χρήση τους για την κατασκευή πειραματικώς υλοποιήσιμων Κβαντικών Χρημάτων. / Fingerprints provide an elegant and cost-e ective solution to the Equality Problem in communication complexity. Their quantum counterpart is one example where an exponential gap exists between classical and quantum communication cost. Moreover, recent publications have proposed e cient ways to construct and work with quantum ngerprints in practice. Apart from the savings in communication cost, quantum ngerprints have an additional, inherent feature, namely the ability to hide information, which renders them a perfect candidate for Quantum Cryptography. This thesis reviews quantum ngerprints both as a communication complexity asset as well as a crypto-primitive and investigates the use of Quantum Fingerprinting to implement experimentally feasible Quantum Money schemes. We propose a public-key Quantum Money scheme comprising Quantum Fingerprints as well as an experimental implementation of it, feasible with current technology.

Biometric systems such as face, palm and fingerprint recognition are very computationally expensive. The ever growing biometric database sizes have posed a need for faster search algorithms. High resolution images are expensive to process and slow down less powerful extraction algorithms. There is an apparent need to improve both the signal processing and the searching algorithms. Researchers have continually searched for new ways of improving the recognition algorithms in order to keep up with the high pace of the scientific and information security world. Most such developments, however, are architecture- or hardware-specific and do not port well to other platforms. This research proposes a cheaper and portable alternative. With the use of the Single Program Multiple Data programming architecture, a distributed fingerprint recognition algorithm is developed and executed on a powerful cluster. The first part in the parallelization of the algorithm is distributing the image enhancement algorithm which comprises of a series of computationally intensive image processing operations. Different processing elements work concurrently on different parts of the same image in order to speed up the processing. The second part of parallelization speeds up searching/ matching through a parallel search. A database is partitioned as evenly as possible amongst the available processing nodes which work independently to search their respective partitions. Each processor returns a match with the highest similarity score and the template with the highest score among those returned is returned as match given that the score is above a certain threshold. The system performance with respect to response time is then formalized in a form of a performance model which can be used to predict the performance of a distributed system given network parameters and number of processing nodes. The proposed algorithm introduces a novel approach to memory distribution of block-wise image processing operations and discusses three different ways to process pixels along the partitioning axes of the distributed images. The distribution and parallelization of the recognition algorithm gains up to as much as 12.5 times performance in matching and 10.2 times in enhancement. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

A rapidly melting ice sheet produces a distinctive geometry of sea level (SL) change. Thus, a network of SL observations may, in principle, be used to infer sources of meltwater flux. We outline a new method, based on a Kalman smoother, for using tide gauge observations to estimate the individual sources of global SL change. The Kalman smoother technique iteratively calculates the maximum likelihood estimate of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheet melt rates at each time step, and it allows for data gaps while also permitting the estimation of non-linear trends. We have also implemented a fixed multi-model Kalman filter that allows us to rigorously account for additional contributions to SL changes, such as glacial isostatic adjustment and thermal expansion. We report on a series of detection experiments based on synthetic SL data that explore the feasibility of extracting source information from SL records before applying the new methodology to historical tide gauge records. In the historical tide gauge study we infer a global mean SL rise of ~1.5 ± 0.5 mm/yr up to 1970, followed by an acceleration to a rate of ~2.0 ± 0.5 mm/yr in 2008. In addition to its connection to SL, Greenland and its large ice sheet act as a barrier to storm systems traversing the North Atlantic. As a result of the interaction with Greenland, low-pressure systems located in the Irminger Sea, between Iceland and Greenland, often produce strong low-level winds. Through a combination of modeling and the analysis of rare in-situ observations, we explore the evolution of a lee cyclone that resulted in three high-speed-wind events in November 2004. Understanding Greenland’s role in these events is critical in our understanding of local weather in this region.