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Currently the use of mobile devices has been exciting enormous boom due, to a greater extent, to the weight and size of these devices, which offers the possibility to take them practically anywhere; to its ability to connect to the internet and other devices; besides its costs are accessible. Due to the advance technological, mobile devices handle different types of information such as: personal, health, banking, and labor, among others; this implies that your level of security must be sufficient to maintain the privacy of device content. Various security mechanisms have been used in the protection of the information of the devices mobile phones, including passwords and patterns. However, there is a risk that the user may forget them or that someone else stolen and uses them (Yang & Bal, 2012). To deal with this situation there are other means that provide the possibility to protect the content of the device more reliable way than typical methods; and these are biometric systems (Tao & Veldhuis, 2010; Ben-Asher, Sieger, Ben-Oved, Kirschnick, Meyer, & Moller, 2011).
Biometric Systems
Biometric systems use automated methods to recognize or verify a person's identity based on physical characteristics (face, fingerprint, iris and finger knuckle print), or behavioral characteristics (voice, signature, gait) (Jain, Ross, & Prabhkar, 2004). A biometric recognition system consists of the following stages as shown in Figure 1:
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Acquisition: the biometric feature is acquired from user through a device.
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Pre-processing: the acquired data are processed to locate the used biometric pattern, which involves remove information that does not belong to the biometric characteristic.
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Extraction of characteristics: the results extract by the previous stage from user’s characteristics are converted into numerical characteristics.
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Classification: the extracted characteristics are compared to the previously stored pattern.
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Take decision: this phase is used to make the final decision about the identity of the user.
Biometric Traits
The identity of a person can be known through its features or biometric characteristics, whether physical and behavioral. The physical features include, for example: the face, the fingerprint, the iris, the retina, hand geometry, finger knuckle print and the ear. The behavioral traits contain: the voice, the writing, gait, the way in which user puts pressure on the screen or keyboard of the device (keystroke), among other.
Figure 1. Phases of a biometric system
Biometric Systems in PDA
The number of people using PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is smaller as compared to those who use devices like smart phone (10 million PDA's: hundreds of millions of smart phones). However, it must maintain the safety of the devices and an alternative to this is to include biometric systems in the PDAs for provide protection to user information. Among the biometric features mostly used in these types of devices are found: writing and keystrokes (Clark, Furnell, & Reynolds, 2012; Zoebisch & Vielhauer, 2003).