Real-Time Speaker Verification System Implemented on Reconfigurable Hardware

Nowadays, biometrics is considered as a promising solution in the market of security and personal verification. Applications such as financial transactions, law enforcement or network management security are already benefitting from this technology. Among the different biometric modalities, speaker verification represents an accurate and efficient way of authenticating a person's identity by analyzing his/her voice. This identification method is especially suitable in real-life scenarios or when a remote recognition over the phone is required. The processing of a signal of voice, in order to extract its unique features, that allows distinguishing an individual to confirm or deny his/her identity is, usually, a process characterized by a high computational cost. This complexity imposes that many systems, based on microprocessor clocked at hundreds of MHz, are unable to process samples of voice in real-time. This drawback has an important effect, since in general, the response time needed by the biometric system affects its acceptability by users. The design based on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) is a suited way to implement systems that require a high computational capability and the resolution of algorithms in real-time. Besides, these devices allow the design of complex digital systems with outstanding performance in terms of execution time. This paper presents the implementation of a MFCC (Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients)-SVM (Support Vector Machine) speaker verification system based on a low-cost FPGA. Experimental results show that our system is able to verify a person's identity as fast as a high-performance microprocessor based on a Pentium IV personal computer.