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Running Head: A SCANNABLE TECHNOLOGY: QR CODE

A SCANNABLE TECHNOLOGY: QR CODE

Writing For Engineer

Kai Hang Chen

City College of New York

Introduction:

Today, all of us have seen a weird looking square with lots of dots on the corner of subway

advertisement, in the window of the local store, on social medias, etc. This is QR Code. QR

Code stands for Quick Response Code. This powerful technology is used to store and

transmit data, and we can simply obtain them by scanning them with our smartphones

(White). Any QR code contains two major components, which are Function Patterns and

Encoding Region. Function Patterns include five sections, which are Quiet Zone, Finder

Patterns, Separator, Timing Patterns and Alignment Patterns. Encoding Region contains

Format Information, Version Information, Data, and Error Correction Codewords (Garg,

2015). Moreover, it is easy to get confused with barcodes, because both of them have the

similar appearances and scan can obtain both data. But the significant difference between QR

Code and the barcode is QR Code can hold more information than a barcode. A barcode only

contains information in the horizontal direction, whereas a QR Code can hold information in

horizontally and vertically.

QR Codes have its fundamental unit called Module. The module is the black-and-white

blocks that make up the data encoded in a QR Code (Garg, 2015). In QR Code, data can be

encrypted in four modes numeric, alphanumeric, binary, and Kanji (Garg, 2015), see

Figure 1. ISO 8859-1 is for certain European languages, such as Albanian and Basque. Shift-

JIS X 0208 is Japanese encode table. The storage of those data determined by the Version

Number or Version Information. Modules stored data and create the rows and columns of the

QR Code, known as the Data Matrix. In mathematical, matrix means the arrangement of

numbers, symbols or letters in rows and columns. This method gives the shape of QR Code

as a square because the rows and columns arranged in the equal number. QR Codes stored

data bits from the bottom right corner and move upward (Garg, 2015). Once the data

reaches the top, it will switch direction to the left, see Figure 1.
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A SCANNABLE TECHNOLOGY: QR CODE
Even though QR Code is becoming part of our daily life, not a lot of people knew about the

inventor of this technology and the reason of the invention. QR Codes created by a Toyota

subsidiary named Denso Wave back in 1994 (White). Denso Waves purpose was to track

vehicles and parts with faster decoding speeds, which given the name of Quick Response

code. Before the creation of QR Codes, barcodes were popular because of its capacity of

store information and read the information by a simple scan. However, the demand of storing

more information in barcode required longer codes and which rising the costs of printing.

Also, the longer barcodes often needed more time to read. Thus, by developing QR Codes

helped to lower the cost of printing and able to improve storage capacity (White).

Figure 1 (Garg, G. (2015, February 19). Maximum character storage capacity (40-L) [Digital
image]. Retrieved February 21, 2017, from http://blog-trycontechnologi.netdna-
ssl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/how-qr-codes-work-encoding-modes.png?x39658)
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A SCANNABLE TECHNOLOGY: QR CODE
Figure 2 (Garg, G. (2015, February 19). [Component of QR Code]. Retrieved
February 20, 2017, from http://scanova.io/blog/blog/2015/02/19/how-qr-codes-work/)

Description

Figure 3 (Garg, G. (2015, February 19). [Component of QR Code]. Retrieved February 20,
2017, from http://scanova.io/blog/blog/2015/02/19/how-qr-codes-work/)

As we know, it only requires scanning software a few seconds to scan a QR Code

completely. However, we can see in Figure 3; there are a lot of sections. Function Patterns

contain five elements, and Encoding Region includes three elements. Each QR Code needs a

Quiet Zone to identify. Quiet Zone is the white space around the QR Codes; it helps the

scanners to locate the Finder Patterns. Finder Patterns are the codes located on the three

corners, their function is to help scanners find the edges of QR Code (Garg 2015). Data is

separated from Finder Pattern by Separator. Separator helps the scanner distinguish between

Finder Patterns and the actual data (Garg 2015). As the scanning software scans the code, it

needs to know the size of each module, which is the unit of a QR Code. The size of the

module is given by the Timing Pattern. Timing Pattern located in sixth row and column of

each QR Code. Finally, Alignment Patterns or Alignment Markers can help the scanning

software to scan a QR Code at any angle, because it determines the orientation of the QR

Code.
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A SCANNABLE TECHNOLOGY: QR CODE
As the patterns contribute to scanning software to locate and identify the size of the module

within the QR Codes. The most important element in every QR Code is the Version Number

or Version Information. Version number ranges from 1 to 40; it determined the number of

rows and columns of modules in the QR Codes. For example, Version 1 have 21 rows, and

21 columns of modules and Version 2 have 25 rows and 25 columns, and so on (Garg,

2015). As the Version Number increases, the storage capacity also increases, which helps to

store more data into QR Codes. Another important element is the Format information. Format

information contains Level of Error Correction. One of many reasons that QR Codes is

convenient is because of Error Correction. Error Correction allows a QR Code to remain

scannable even if it is damaged up to 30%. This algorithm is called Reed-Solomon Error

Correction (Garg 2015). There are four possible levels of error corrections, see Figure 4.

Also, people use this algorithm to decorate their QR Codes.

Figure 4. (Garg, G. (2015, February 19). Error correction level [Digital image].
Retrieved February 21, 2017, from http://blog-trycontechnologi.netdna-
ssl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/how-qr-codes-work-error-correction.png?
x39658)

Conclusion

QR Codes are incredibly complex and unable to understand by human eyes visually.

However, each element work together to store data and let scanner software to convert these

data into a text, website or even to steal your personal information. QR Codes contain

Function Patterns, which have five elements and help scanner software to locate data, identify
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A SCANNABLE TECHNOLOGY: QR CODE
the size of the module. Once the software located the data and Encoding Region, the

decoding process began. All those steps are done within seconds, all because of those

elements separated the location of data into the different matrix.

from http://scanova.io/blog/blog/2015/02/19/how-qr-codes-work/

Garg, G. (2015, February 19). How QR codes work: Everything you need to know.

Retrieved February 22, 2017, from Scanova,

http://scanova.io/blog/blog/2015/02/19/how-qr-codes-work/

Garg, G. (2015, February 19). Error correction level [Digital image]. Retrieved February 21,

2017, From

http://blog-trycontechnologi.netdna-ssl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/how-

qr-codes-work-error-correction.png?x39658

Garg, G. (2015, February 19). Maximum character storage capacity (40-L) [Digital

image]. Retrieved February 21, 2017, from http://blog-trycontechnologi.netdna-

ssl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/how-qr-codes-work-encoding-modes.png?

x39658

White, M. (n.d.). Mobile-QR-Codes.org. Retrieved February 20, 2017, from

http://www.mobile-qr-codes.org/qr-codes.html