Journal of Pattern Recognition Research

Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are frequently used for creation and transmission of private and sensitive messages and files. While personal identification numbers and passwords have been the standard for mobile device security, users tend to forget complex character combinations or reuse them for multiple accounts. These disadvantages have caused researchers to explore biometric authentication for accurate and convenient mobile device security by taking advantage of refined sensing technologies which capture environmental, positional, and interactive information. This information has been found useful in uniquely modeling physical and behavioral characteristics such that biometric recognition is feasible. In this paper, over 100 biometric approaches to mobile device security are surveyed. The advantages and research challenges associated with ten biometric modalities are provided, along with discussion of various commercial implementations and biometric template protection schemes.