ECO-ID: Event-Camera based Optical System for Secure Multi-User Ultra-Low Latency Identification
2026-08-17 • Cryptography and Security
Cryptography and SecurityInformation TheoryNetworking and Internet Architecture
AI summaryⓘ
The authors developed ECO-ID, a system that quickly identifies multiple users by using tiny brightness changes detected by a special camera called an event camera. Instead of relying on passwords or near-contact methods, their system uses different LED light patterns and precise timing to tell users apart without needing them to be perfectly synchronized. This approach allows for very fast identification (under a millisecond) and works well even with many users at once. It also offers better security and privacy by reducing the usual risks of wireless communication.
event cameravisible light communicationLED codingmulti-user identificationultra-low latencyasynchronous sensingspatiotemporal codingreplay protectionRF securitybrightness transitions
Authors
Subham Sabud, Chengling Xu, Feng Ye
Abstract
Time-critical interactive systems increasingly require ultra-low-latency device identification for multiple users, yet prevailing approaches such as passwords, QR codes, and RFID/NFC are constrained by human input, frame-based sensing, or near-contact range. This paper presents ECO-ID, an event-camera-based optical system for multi-user, ultra-low-latency identification over visible light communication (VLC). Leveraging microsecond-resolution, asynchronous observations of brightness transitions, ECO-ID employs a spatiotemporal coding design: disjoint LED subsets provide spatial separation among users, while user-specific timing delays encode identities without inter-user synchronization. The optical channel and event-driven sensing reduce full-scene capture relative to frame cameras and limit the RF attack surface, while enabling rapid token verification with freshness and replay protection. We implement a prototype and demonstrate that ECO-ID can practically achieve approximately 99.8\% localization and 98.7\% identification with 0.64 ms mean latency, while theoretically supporting identification at the scale of tens of concurrent users. Overall, ECO-ID provides a fast, privacy-conscious, and security-aware alternative for scalable multi-user identification in time-critical interactive environments.