An evaluation of the Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes usage for bio-cryptographic algorithms

Bio-cryptography represents a relative new and emerging domain, which proposes to strengthen the usual biometric systems, by adding the traditional cryptography layer to their architecture. Its main benefit lies in the elimination of the need for storing enrolled users biometric templates. Although bio-cryptographic algorithms confer a certain level of security, their main disadvantage is the high consumption of computational resources they exhibit, as they perform many complex mathematical operations and need large amounts of data for their completion. This paper proposes the error-correcting codes method for reducing bio-cryptographic algorithms computational complexity and aims to evaluate the usage of Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes during the polynomial reconstruction phase of the biometric decryption stage within the Fuzzy Vault scheme.