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IoT and Wi-Fi Based Door Access Control System

using Mobile Application
Rehnuma Reza Deepty Albina Alam Dr. Md. Ezharul Islam
Department of CSE Department of CSE Department of CSE
Jahangirnagar University Jahangirnagar University Jahangirnagar University
Dhaka, Bangladesh Dhaka, Bangladesh Dhaka, Bangladesh
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—With the advent of technology, it is hard to find such IoT-based [2] door access system has been evolved from
such field where technology has not appeared. One of the most there. The Wi-Fi and cloud based door access system will
citable area where technology is applied is security. Door access ensure that only the authorized user can access the door. We
system is one of the major concern of home security. It has been
enhanced with the days using different techniques such as, mobile also get encouraged from the fact that, the android app based
application, real-time authentication system (e.g. audio and video door lock system is available everywhere, however, the access
processing), Bluetooth and other technological inventions. Later, techniques completely depend only on the app which is a
Internet of Things (IoT) has been introduced to this field as drawback because it can cause system vulnerability. So, The
well. This paper illustrates, an IoT and Wi-Fi based door access motivation of our project is to overcome these drawbacks and
control system, where a user can control the access to the door
using his phone remotely within the coverage area provided create an efficient system that is safe and secured.
by the wireless Access-Point that is situated inside the home. In this research, we propose a door access system which
This system takes advantage of Biometric feature of the Android is activated on Wi-Fi [3] TCP/IP communication and is to
phone which is used to validate authorized user and a cloud based be operated using only a mobile application that will take the
server as the medium of user verification. The strong point of
biometric feature of the user and then perform another authen-
our system is multiple layered automated security system where
authentication is performed on both ends (mobile application and tication process beyond the user’s perception, using mobile
door access controller) beyond user’s perception which prohibits specific IMEI number by comparing it with the registered one
unauthorized access or manipulation. We have used Raspberry stored on the cloud server to make sure that only registered
Pi as the door access controller and other state-of-the art devices phone is using as a key.
to create testbed of the system and verified its use in practical
environment.
This paper conveys the details of related works done in
Index Terms—Internet of Things (IoT), Android, Door access this field in section II. In section III, the system architecture
system, Biometric feature. has been depicted with adequate diagrams. Section IV and V
contains the system security and the system implementation
I. I NTRODUCTION and evaluation respectively. Section VI concludes this paper
The security has always been a matter of concern since the with some future works.
dawn of the evolution of community. The origin of door lock
[1] can be traced back as far as 4000 B.C., in Egypt,Greece II. R ELATED W ORKS
and Iraq. These locks shared the same basic principle of pin
Many door access control based researches can be found
locks today where pins of varying length prevented access
in literature. However, none of them has presented similar
to the door unless the matching key was inserted to line up
advanced features as our proposed system.
the pins and access the door. Then, all the door access system
In [4], Kamelia et al. has proposed a Bluetooth based
were provided with traditional deadlock system where a person
automation system .The system has been designed to simulate
needed to keep his keys with himself all the time when he/she
a Bluetooth controlled electronic key, which is controlled by
is not at home. This traditional system often leads to the
a smart phone.
situation of losing keys and breaking the door to access as
a consequence. Moreover, carrying keys all the time is not a In [5], Britto et al. has given proposal on a Sixth Sense
safe enough. This is when the technology arrived to ease the Door using Internet of Things. They have provided the concept
door access system. of sensing movement in front door. An attached camera will
Security for home appliances has become a challenge capture image of the person after a motion sensation. The
in these present days. Even though lot of techniques and image will be transmitted to the owner’s phone which will
measures exist to provide security over them, there are still appear as a push notification.
questions on ease of their uses. The motivation for developing In [6], Sarika et al. has proposed a smart login system using
biometrics. The system is motivated to use fingerprint scanner
to unlock the door.

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 In [7], Burns et al. has proposed a RFID controlled door
lock . where the door lock is controlled with an exterior RFID
card input.
In [8], Pang et al. has patented on Bluetooth and Biometric
feature based Access Control System. They have proposed that
the door will be unlocked using the biometric features as an
authentication media and setting a Bluetooth communication
link between app and the controller.
In [9], Kassem et al. has proposed a smart door lock pro-
viding security via WiFi . The system has been implemented
by generating digital keys on user’s phone which is used as
the authentication method for validating the legitimate user’s
identity.
In [10], Hadis et al. has proposed a smart door lock system
using IoT where the door will be unlocked automatically if
the user’s phone has reached within the Bluetooth range.
In [11], Thakur et al. has proposed a door lock system which
is controlled using biometric or facial recognition via mobile
application using WiFi or Bluetooth as the communication
link.
III. S YSTEM A RCHITECTURE Fig. 1. System Architecture

Our system is established on the concept that, the users

phone IMEI number will be registered in the controller. Only phone’s IMEI number to the door access controller using
his/her fingerprints applied on the phone in the vicinity of the keypad.
Wi-Fi network provided by the router established inside the After the registration process is done, the user can be
home, will unlock the door. On each trial, the IMEIs will be able to use the system inserting his/her fingerprint on his/her
stored in the cloud for in-query purpose.The whole system phone’s scanner. The system operation is depicted through
architecture is depicted in Fig. 1. Table I.
The operations that take place beyond user’s perception are
A. Parts of The System
classified and they are:
1) Door lock: We have used Electronic door lock so that
it can get signal from our controller which is given after the 1) Retrievation of IMEI: After an insertion of valid fin-
proper verification and authentication gerprint into the mobile app, the IMEI of mobile phone is
2) Door Access controller: This controller acts as a central fetched.
to the door lock by giving command whether to open or close 2) Data Encryption and Decryption: After a successful
the door. It is an interface between all other modules used to fetching of IMEI, the unique number is encrypted using cipher
develop this system. It also act as a socket server to get signal algorithm within the app. The encrypted IMEI is decrypted in
from socket client under the same IP address. the second phase of authentication process.
3) Cloud Server: A cloud based server is required to store 3) Cloud Data Storage: The encrypted IMEI is stored in the
the encrypted IMEI number in order to perform authentication cloud server and retrieved by controller during authentication.
on each attempt. It also functions as a storage medium for 4) Authentication: There is two level of authentication in
keeping required data of a registered user. this project. First one takes place during biometric feature
4) Mobile Application: When a legitimate user opens the insertion into the app. And the other one takes place after
application, it will lead him/her to a screen asking for finger- the socket communication between mobile and the controller.
print as the beginning of first authentication. The successful
authentication will allow to establish a TCP/IP socket commu- C. Special Features
nication between the mobile phone and door access controller. The system is schemed with a special feature that will be
conducted by the user in some special situations, for example,
B. System Operation when the phone gets lost or questioned by security breaches.
System starts with the mobile application in which user When the phone gets stolen or lost, the user can go to
needs to go through registration process with the specified the website designed for this system using any machines
credentials (i.e.name, address, phone number, access scheme nearby and can change the access scheme from fingerprint to
etc.). These information are stored in the cloud which will be password scheme. He/she can also set or update password in
needed for further authentication process. After a successful that situation. But before doing this, the user has to go through
registration, the user will be directed to register his/her android an account verification process using email and password.



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 TABLE I TABLE II
S TEPS OF SYSTEM OPERATION D ETAILS OF R EQUIRED S OFTWARE

Device Steps Modules Visibility Method Software/Environment Specification

Name to user
1 Registration Visible Storing user credentials Android Studio Android Studio 3.1
in the app to the cloud storage. Operating System Raspbian
2 Log In Visible Verification with the stored Programming Language Python 2.7, Java 8
data in the cloud.
Android 3 Fingerprint Visible Fingerprint scanned and
matched with the
registered one.
Phone 4 Retrieving Invisible App dials *#06# to retrieve V. S YSTEM I MPLEMENTATION AND E VALUATION
IMEI IMEI number and
encrypts it. In this section, we present the detail procedure of the step
5 Sending IMEI Invisible Encrypted IMEI is sent
to the to the cloud server
by step implementations.
cloud server
6 Wifi Invisible A TCP/IP socket connection A. Building Android app
communication request is sent as client.
Door 1 Wifi connection Invisible A TCP/IP socket connection The software part of this system grandly implemented in
with the app request is accepted as server.
Access 2 Retrieving the Invisible Decrypting the data building android app. To enhance the features required for
last IMEI stored (IMEI) stored in the cloud.
in the cloud
this app are described below-
Controller 3 Authentication Invisible Run verification between 1) BiometricPrompt API : To enable the fingerprint fea-
two data (stored
and retrieved) and if ture on the app, the BiometricPrompt API [12] has been
matched, leads to step 4 used.Android version 6.0 or higher can only have the Biomet-
4 Door Visible Passing signal to the lock
unlock and gets unlocked. ricPromot API. Minimum API level 23 is required for enabling
the BiometricPrompt API.
2) IMEI Number Retrieving : To fetch the IMEI number
The website also offers the user to check the activity logs, we required TelephonyManager [13] class that asks user
that is, how many attempts have been made to unlock the door permission to access the contacts to fetch the IMEI number.
and their schedules. 3) Firebase: Firebase platform [14] has been used in order
IV. S YSTEM S ECURITY to store the user credentials during registration and also the
IMEI of user’s mobile phone for facilitating further authenti-
We have retained most of the important operations such as
cation process.
retrieving IMEI number, establishing Wi-Fi communication
between client and server device, comparison etc. beyond B. Configuring Raspberry PI
user viewpoint to make the system more secure as well as
user friendly. And this feature made our system to prevent The system is implemented using Raspberry Pi [15] as
unauthorized access from any dishonest system manipulation the door access controller. The Pi has been configured with
or intrusion. different useful libraries such as Rpi.GPIO , pad4pi, python-
For securing the system we have used the following firebase, to integrate with other components.
features-
C. Interfacing Keypad
A. Biometric A 4x4 matrix keypad has been interfaced with the controller
Biometric feature is used in mobile application to ensure for the purpose of pre-registration.
that the phone is on the correct hand (i.e. legitimate user).
D. Establishing TCP/IP Socket communication
B. IMEI Number
For establishing communication link between the android
To prevent any unauthorized attempt we have used IMEI app and the controller, A TCP/IP socket communication [16]
number to match with the one stored on the door access data link has been used. TCP/IP socket communication system
controller during installation process. This will ensure only establishes connection between client and server who are using
user specified mobile phones to initiate any attempt. common IP address of IPv4.
C. Cryptography
E. Connecting the Lock to the Raspberry pi using relay
Since IMEI number from mobile application is stored on the
cloud server, so had to make it secure so that no overhearing A 12 volt solenoid electric lock has been interfaced with
can occur. the PI to demonstrating the lock/unlock. The lock has been
interfaced via 5 volt relay module with the controller for safety.
D. TCP/IP socket communication The full specification of required software and hardware is
In socket communication the user or mobile application acts summarized in Table II and Table III respectively.
as client and the door controller acts as server in the network.
Whenever the communication link is established, door access The complete diagram of our implemented system is shown
controller will start authentication process. in Fig. 2:



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 TABLE III Fi communication to conduct all form of communication and
D ETAILS OF H ARDWARE signal passing.
Device Name Specification
Door Access Controller Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
VI. C ONCLUSION
Keypad 4X4 Matrix keypad In this paper, we have introduced a robust and secured sys-
Door Lock 12 volt solenoid electric lock
Relay Module 5 volt Relay module tem with a simple user interface. This system is implemented
Resistor Red and Green (Optional) using raspberry pi as the controller, mobile application as user-
access device and firebase as cloud data storage. One of the
most signicant characteristics of this mobile application is
that it automates the generations of IMEI to the Raspberry
Pi beyond the user’s perception. This makes the mobile
application more adaptable and feasible because users do not
need to memorize the whole chunk of patterns or password
to automate the access system. In future, we would like to
enhance the system to support multi-user and extend it as one-
spot home automation and security system.
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Our Proposed      
System



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