Development of Color QR Code for Increasing Capacity

Abstract

Barcodes have been widely popular. Their popularity has encouraged an ongoing invention of decoding methods. Barcodes can be categorized into 2 main groups, namely one-dimension (1D) barcodes at which information is stored horizontally and two-dimension (2D) barcodes which contain information in both vertical and horizontal direction, promising a higher storage capacity compared to 1D barcodes. Despite high data density, an amount of information obtained in 2D barcodes still limited to some extent. This study selected QR Code (Quick Response Code) is a type of 2D barcode because firstly, it can handle a variety of information. Secondly, decoding is reasonably straightforward. Finally, the structure of QR code is specified clearly by its developer. This research aimed to increase QR Code capacity by proposing a color Quick Response Code (color QR code) encoding concept which can hold a larger amount of information than that of the traditional black and white QR Code regarding their physical size. A two-color (black and white) QR Code can store 1 bit in each module only, whereas a module of a color QR code with sixteen different colors can contain 4-bit data. In order to decode a color QR code, this study used a code reader equipped with at least an 8-megapixel camera and a decoding application was developed on Android (Android application on mobile phone) and Java (Java application on PC) platform.