Enhanced user verification in IoT applications: a fusion-based multimodal cancelable biometric system with ECG and PPG signals

The core premise of cancelable biometrics lies in the creation of a distinct biometric template for every individual, which can be either canceled or regenerated as needed. This process requires the use of a uniquely-defined key during the generation of such template. The generated templates are tailored to be key-specific. This ensures that each distinct key will generate a unique template, while preserving the integrity and security of the original biometric data, ensuring that it remains uncompromised. In this paper, a cancelable biometric system based on electrocardiography (ECG) and photoplethysmography (PPG) signals is introduced. A signal fusion process is implemented for the two traits to generate a single template per user. In order to enhance the security of generated templates, a well-designed permutation stage is implemented according to a user-specific key. The permutation key is obtained through a well-designed look-up table created by the authors. The user verification is conducted on the cancelable template, without the need for any inversion processes. The user verification scheme depends on a two-pronged approach: robust feature extraction followed by the application of a machine learning (ML) classifier. The mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) extraction algorithm is employed for feature extraction due to the low frequency range of the adopted biometric signals and the nonlinearity of the filter bank used for MFCC extraction. Several ML classifiers are adopted to validate the system with cancelable templates without any inversion process. Simulation results with multilayer perceptron (MLP) and logistic regression (LR) classifiers demonstrated superior effectiveness of the proposed authentication framework, with accuracy rates up to 100% and 99.7% on the pulse transit time PPG and BIDMC datasets, respectively. Hence, the proposed system proves effective access control and user verification in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications.