Wednesday, January 27, 2010

QR Code Overview

QR Code Overview


Application Areas of QR Code


QR Code is mainly used in Asia (Japan) for automotive and logistic applications. Starting with 2006/2007 the QR Code is also in use in the areas of mobile marketing and business (e.g. Japanese business cards).


Depending on the application a QR-Code can be used to encode specific URLs or ticket numbers: in a mobile marketing scenario a QR Code symbol is printed or displayed on products or marketing related material (like displays, magazines or web-sites). A user can now scan and decode this QR Code using a mobile phone with a built-in camera and suitable decoder software. After decoding the QR Code symbol, the user is forwarded to product related web-sites or marketing campaigns.


QRCode Classification


QRCode is a 2D barcode symbology with very high data density. In practice up to several hundred bytes are encoded in a single symbol. Each dot in a QR-Code symbol represents a bit. In contrast to linear bar-codes which encode the information usually in the ratio of the bars or spaces to each other a QRCode is more tolerant with respect to poor printing quality.


History of QR Code


QR Code was developed 1994 by the company DENSO.


Aliases of QRCode


QRCode is also known under the names Quick Response Code, QR-Code.


Technical Data


Normative standards: The normative standards for the QR-Code barcode symbology are named JIS X 0510 (Japan) or ISO/IEC 18004 (ISO International Standard).


Data capacity: A single QRCode symbol can hold up to 7089 numeric characters, 4296 alphanumeric characters, 2953 bytes (binary data) or 1817 Kanji characters (character set according to JIS X 0208).


The default character set is JIS-8/Shift-JIS, which corresponds to ECI 000020. Other character sets are possible by using different ECIs.


Error correction: QR Code offers a built-in error correction based on Reed-Solomon algorithms. The error correction level can be adjusted (supported levels are Low, Medium, Quartile, High). Depending on the error correction level it is possible to restore between 7% (Low) and 30% (High) of unreadable codewords in a QRCode symbol without data loss.


QR Code supports 'Structured Append'. Up to 16 QRCode symbols can be concatenated. If a scanner or decoder supports this feature, it returns the concatenated data content in the correct order.


QR Code printing quality: To optimize barcode quality a QR-Code symbol should not be printed with dots smaller than 4 to 5 device pixels.






QRCode Samples


QR Code with encoded URL (Mobile Marketing)






QRCode with 6 characters



QR Code with 200 characters



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