1

DESIGN OF AN EMBEDDED SMART CAR SECURITY USING FINGERPRINT

AND THEFT CONTROL SYSTEM

Manoj Kollam Dept. of Electronics and

Communication Engg.,

VNR VJIET, India.

mkollam@gmail.com

Aruna Kumari Kakumani Assistant Professor

Dept. of Electronics and

Communication Engg.,

VNR VJIET, India.

A.Ramesh kumar

Sr. Assistant Professor

Dept. Of Electronic and

Communication Engg.,

VNR VJIET, India.

aruna.kakumani@gmail.com rameshkumar_aytha@yahoo.com

Abstract— This paper deals with the design of an embedded

smart car security and theft control system. The system

efficiently provides security by controlling and preventing the

theft of a car. It consists of a finger print detection subsystem,

a GPS (Global Positioning System) module, a GSM (Global

System for Mobile Communications) module and a control

platform. The Finger print module verifies whether a person is

authorized to start the car and sounds an alarm loudly or

soundlessly in the event of theft. The other modules transmit

necessary information to users/police and help in constantly

monitoring the location of cars at all times, even after the car is

stolen. This security and theft control system developed can be

easily implemented in any other automobile.

Keywords - biometric (fingerprint); Global System for Mobile

Communication (GSM); Global Positioning System (GPS);

ARM7 (LPC 2148) Microcontroller

I. INTRODUCTION

Traditional car security systems rely on many sensors

which are very costly. When a car is really lost or stolen,

usually no feedback is available for the owner to find it.

With the development of many advanced embedded

techniques [1], their applications such as car security system

design and analysis have also improved. Many new

techniques such as biometric recognition techniques, image

processing techniques, communication techniques and so

on, have been integrated into car security systems [2], [3].

However, the number of accidents of cars still remain high,

including the number of cars being stolen [4]. So, there is a

high demand for a practicable car security system which is

efficient, robust and reliable [6].

Fingerprint detection techniques have been heavily

studied in recent years [3]. Many new fast and efficient

finger print detection techniques have been developed to

achieve higher detection rates. Most of the techniques are

tested on PC platforms with several stand-alone fingerprint

or remote non-fingerprint databases.

We propose to set-up a fast and effective fingerprint

detection technique system in a car security system. It helps

to sound an alarm to alert the owner or the police in the

event of any attempt of theft. It also alerts soundlessly with

the help of other modules in the system prototype.

At the time of a car being started, the fingerprint

module checks if the person is authorized or not. If the

fingerprint is not valid, an alarm or a “silent” alarm will be

triggered according to the user‟s settings. In silent alarm

setting, no direct alarm will be triggered, instead, several

modules which are working transmits important data such as

the precise location of the car to the owner and police.

The GPS module in the security system obtains the

precise location of the stolen car by parsing received GPS

signal. The GSM module sends the real-time position of the

stolen car by SMS (Short Message Service) message.

All these processes are controlled by the central

embedded control module, which includes fingerprint

detection system that sounds an alarm, GSM module which

sends SMS messages of GPS signal and various other

communications with the subsystems in the car.

Figure 1. Configuration of the embedded smart car security and theft

control system. The system is divided into 4 main modules: Embedded control platform with FPR, GPS module and GSM module.

II. FINGER PRINT DETECTION SUBSYSTEM

The finger print module works on „Immense Improved

Algorithm‟. NG OP-67 algorithm is specially written

2

according to optic imaging theory. The algorithm is good

even for de-shaped or low-quality fingers due to its

excellent correction and tolerance features.

NG OP-67 Blue backlight fingerprint sensor module

shown in Fig. 2, adopts the optic fingerprint sensor, which

consists of high-performance DSP and flash capabilities. It

is able to perform the operations such as fingerprint image

processing, template generation, template matching,

fingerprint searching, template storage, etc., making its

usage very ease and effective.

A. Fingerprint Algorithm

A Fingerprint algorithm captures the features from

fingerprint image which represents a person‟s fingerprint

information. The saving, matching and capturing of

fingerprint templates are all manipulated through the two

fingerprint features given below:

i) 1:1 Comparing 2 fingerprint templates. Return info:

matching or not matching.

ii) 1:N Searching the matching fingerprint from a number

of fingerprint features. Return info: No matching features

or having matching features and returning the matching

features‟ ID simultaneously.

III. EMBEDDED CONTROL PLATFORM

The embedded control platform is built on ARM7

(LPC2148) [12]. The Philips LPC2148 shown in Fig. 3 is an

ARM7TDMI-S based high-performance 32-bit RISC

Microcontroller with thumb extensions, 512KB on-chip

flash ROM with in-System Programming (ISP) and in-

Application Programming (IAP), 32KB RAM, two 10-bit

ADCs with 14 channels, USB 2.0 Full Speed Device

Controller, two UARTs, one with full modem interface, two

I2C serial interfaces, two SPI serial interfaces, two 32-bit

timers, Watchdog Timer, PWM unit, Real Time Clock with

optional battery backup, Brown out detect circuit, General

purpose I/O pins, CPU clock up to 60 MHz, On-chip crystal

Figure 2. NG OP-67 Fingerprint Module

Figure 3. ARM7 (LPC2148) Board

oscillator and On-chip PLL Vectored Interrupt Controller,

ESRAM and 64KB RAM which of quite large capacity in

embedded world to store the most important code. We

collect statistics to pick those kernel functions out by profile

tools contained in ARM Emulator (the instruction set

simulator of ARM Co.), then put them into ESRAM when

running, by one scattered-loading file which guides the

ARMCC (ARM compiler tool) to compile corresponding

files with special memory address and whole project

program is compiled into AXF (ARM executable File)

format. During the boot process of the program, several

assembly codes produced by ARMCC will copy those

special codes to special addresses. These kernel codes will

be stored in ESRAM and can be accessed quickly.

Consequently, the performance of the system will be

improved greatly.

B. Process control

Embedded control platform is an embedded system

board, which contains ARM processor chip, memory,

outside interface modules and so on. Embedded control

platform controls the following processes:

1. Obtaining finger print from FPR

2. Detecting finger prints

3. Getting and handling the data from GPS module.

4. Sending messages by GSM module

5. Controlling Ignition

IV. GPS MODULE

GPS technique has been widely used both in military

equipment as well as civil devices in recent years. We

choose Jupiter TU30 GPS module (Fig. 4) to offer the

location of the car in real-time. TU30 has a UART

(Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter), which can

be used to communicate with many other embedded

3

devices. It is easy to get a serial of char from TU30 at 9600

bps speed from

Figure 4. GPS module

Figure 5. GSM module (SIM 300)

Figure 6. Security and Theft controlling unit

the UART interface. After parsing the string, longitude,

latitude, and speed of the car can be obtained to judge the

precise location of the car.

V. GSM MODULE

To achieve important information of cars, one GSM

module is added into the car security system. SIM300 GSM

modem (Fig. 5) can quickly send SMS messages to

appointed mobile phone or SMS server. So the owner and

the police can be informed about the information of the

stolen car.

VI. RESULTS

The designed & developed system (Fig. 6) is installed

in the car. An interface of Fingerprint module, GPS and

GSM modems is also connected to the microcontroller,

which is in turn connected to the engine. When a car is

being started, the finger print module checks if the person is

authorized or not. The module is shown in Fig. 7. If the

authentication fails the GSM modem sends SMS to

predefined number. The SMS contains longitude and

latitude of the car as shown in the Fig. 8. The car can also

be stopped by sending SMS to the GSM modem present in

the car. After receiving the SMS, microcontroller present in

the car makes the engine immobilize. Fig. 9 shows this

stopped status on the LCD display present on the kit.

If the vehicle is stolen, the information can be obtained

by the car owner for further processing. The information is

passed onto the central processing insurance system where,

by sitting at a remote place, a particular phone number is

dialled by them to the interfacing mobile that is with the

hardware kit installed in the car. By reading the signals

received by the mobile, one can control the ignition of the

engine; say to lock it or to stop the engine immediately (Fig.

9). When the car is stolen, owner of car will stop the stolen

car by just sending an SMS to the SIM present in the car.

The location of the stolen car will then be sent to a

predefined number and to the local police. The SMS sent

also stops the car from moving further.

Figure 7. Fingerprint checking.

4

Figure 8. Received SMS displaying GPS coordinated of the Vehicle.

Figure 9. Display indicating that vehicle has been immobilized

VII. CONCLUSION

If vehicle is to be started, the finger print module

checks whether the person is authorized or not. If the finger

print is not valid, SMS is sent with the help GSM to the

predefined number (Fig. 7).The proposed system for finding

the robbed vehicles would act as a benchmark for rendering

an effective way of curbing the automobile pilfering. As the

electronic system installed in the system consists of GPS, it

provides effective vehicle tracking and also, the GSM

modem which is being used, provides a good global

communication.

This system is highly reliable. Since GSM is used, there

is an advantage of more stable network with robust features

and covers mostly all parts of the world. The owner need

not rely on any alarm system or a mechanical device which

may be easily hotwired or broken. We strongly feel that the

system would be a landmark in both technological as well as

social excellence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We sincerely express our gratitude to Dr. P. Srihari

(ECE-HOD of VNRVJIET) and Dr. C. D. Naidu (Principal

of VNRVJIET) for their constant guidance, encouragement

and valuable advice.

REFERENCES

[1] D. V. Hall, “Microprocessors and interfacing: programming and hardware”, Tata McGraw-Hill, 1986.

[2] A. Joseph O'Sullivan and R. Pless, “Advances in Security Technologies: Imaging, Anomaly Detection, and Target and Biometric

Recognition”, IEEE/MTT-S, 2007, pp 761-764.

[3] CARSAFE - National motor vehicle theft reduction Conference,

Australia. Online: http://www.carsafe.com.au

[4] S. Ajaz et al., “Autonomous Vehicle Monitoring and Tracking System,”

SCONEST, 2005, pp 1-4.

[5] W. Lili and C. Tiejun, “Automobile Anti-theft System Design based on

GSM”, ICACC, 2008, pp 551-554.

[6] Stolen and Wrecked Vehicles Monitoring Program, CCMTA June,

1994 (Canada).

[7] CCMTA Best Practice Models for Combating Auto Theft, Version 6.1,

Oct. 2006.

[8] Upkar Varshney, “A Framework for the Emerging Mobile Commerce

Applications”, ICSS, 2001, pp 1-10.

[9] A. Nilsson and D. Olsson, “MEP - A Media Event Platform”, Journal of

Mobile Networks and Communications, vol 3, 2002, pp 235-244.

[10] Ford Long Wong et al., “Evaluation Framework of Location Privacy

of Wireless Mobile Systems with Arbitrary Beam Pattern”, CNSR, 2007,

pp 157-165.

[11] P. Ahluwalia and U. Varshney, “A Framework for Tran- saction Level

Quality of Service for M-Commerce Applications”, IEEE Transactions on mobile computing, 2007, pp 848-864.

[12] ARM Developer Suite. Online: www.arm.com

[13] Online: http://www. gisdevelopment.net

[14] Online: www.fipa.org