  Fingerprint verification is an important bio-metric technique for personal
identification. Most of the automatic verification systems are based on
matching of fingerprint minutiae. Extraction of minutiae is an essential
process which requires estimation of orientation of the lines in an image. Most
of the existing methods involve intense mathematical computations and hence are
performed through software means. In this paper a hardware scheme to perform
real time orientation estimation is presented which is based on pipelined
architecture. Synthesized circuits proved the functionality and accuracy of the
suggested method.
