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On the Impact of FFP2 Face Masks on Speaker Verification for Mobile Device Authentication

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Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia Intelligence (MoMM 2023)

Abstract

Voice-based authentication can allow for straightforward and unobtrusive authentication with mobile devices. With COVID-19, wearing face masks has become common in many parts of the world. While prior research has shown that face masks act like low pass filters, the impact of face masks on voice-based authentication with mobile devices is still unclear. In this paper we analyze the impact of FFP2 masks on voice authentication for mobile devices in realistic scenarios. We evaluate a pretrained EPACA-TDDN speaker verification model with a self-recorded database of 450 mobile voice authentication utterances from 30 speakers, with a total length of 29 min. Results indicate that wearing FFP2 face masks has a slight but significant impact on speaker verification scores. Results also indicate that in authentication scenarios they lead to a slight increase of the FNR, and in comparison smaller decrease of the FPR, and in direct comparison, to a slight increase of the EER.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/using-face-masks-community-reducing-covid-19-transmission (Jul 2022).

  2. 2.

    https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/using-face-masks-community-reducing-covid-19-transmission (Jul 2022).

  3. 3.

    Android version market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobile (Jul 2022).

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Correspondence to David Sedlak .

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Sedlak, D., Findling, R.D. (2023). On the Impact of FFP2 Face Masks on Speaker Verification for Mobile Device Authentication. In: Delir Haghighi, P., Khalil, I., Kotsis, G., ER, N.A.S. (eds) Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia Intelligence. MoMM 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14417. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48348-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48348-6_3

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