Standard audio format encapsulation (SAFE)

One characteristic that distinguishes speaker recognition (identification, verification, classification, tracking, etc.) from other biometrics is that it is designed to operate with devices and over channels that were created for other technologies and functions. That characteristic supports broad, inexpensive, and speedy deployments. The explosion of mobile devices has exacerbated the mismatch problem and the challenges for interoperability. This paper presents a detailed proposal for interoperability that supports all types of audio interchange operations while, at the same time, limiting the audio formats to a small set of widely-used, open standards. We call this proposal Standard Audio Format Encapsulation (SAFE). The SAFE proposal has been incorporated into speaker-recognition data interchange draft standards by the M1 (biometrics) committee of ANSI/INCITS and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC37 project 19794-13 (Voice data).