Barcode Technology

Introduction
During a shopping excursion to a shopping mall, you would have noticed the cashier
scanning your products using some Laser device to
produce a bill. What actually he
is doing that he is reading the product barcodes using a Laser/Barcode scanner.
Barcode scanner reads the code, data is sent to the computer, and computer looks up
into the database for the price and description of the item.

Barcodes are structured to contain specific product related information. t basically
encodes alphanumeric characters and symbols using black and white stripes, also
called bars. Bar-coding is one of the ADC (Automatic dentification and Data
Collection) technologies which reduce human involvement in data entry and collection
and thereby also reducing error and time.

Structure of Barcode
A typical barcode consists of the following:

Quiet Zone The minimum required space for bar code scan-ability, preceding the Start
Character of a bar code symbol. The quiet zone should be free from any printing and be
the same colour and reflectance as the background of bar code symbol. The Quiet Zone
should be ten times the width of the narrowest element in the bar code, or 0.25 inch
minimum. Also known as Clear Area.
Start Code ndicates the start of the barcode. These are sspecial bar code characters
& they signify the start of data to the scanner/reader. Start characters are usually
stripped-off and not transmitted to the host.
Data The actual data the barcode stores.
Check Digit Check digit (not always present) is a mathematical sum that is used to
verify the accuracy of the other elements of the barcode. t is the eextra digit added at
the end of a bar code to allow the scanner to confirm that it read the bar code correctly.
t is typically stripped from the data and not transmitted to the host.
Stop Code ndicates the stopping point of the barcode. These characters signify the
end of data to the scanner/reader. They are also stripped-off and not transmitted to the
host.
TraiIing Quiet Zone Another clear space with no printing following the Stop
Character.


Linear Barcode Standards
Linear barcodes use single row of black and white bars. Examples of linear barcodes
are:
ISO/IEC 15420 Bar code symboIogy specification - EAN/UPC
&!C (&niversal !roduct Code) uses 12-digit numeric containing a unique manufacturer
D number, and product number. EAN (European Article Numbering) is similar to &!C
except the fact that it uses 13-digit numeric.


ISO/IEC 16388 Bar code symboIogy specifications - Code 39
t is a discrete barcode. t implies that a single character is represented by a fixed
pattern of bars. Each character is made up of 9 (5 black & 4 white) bars. Code 39
barcode symbology supports 43 characters set plus an additional character used as a
delimiter or start/stop character. The start/stop character always occurs as the first and
last character in a complete barcode and is represented in the human readable text by
the character.

The 43 character set includes the Iollowing: 1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNJPQRSTUVWXYZ - .
$ / + % SPACE.
A check digit is generally not used with Code 39. The check digit is the modulus 43 sum
of all the character values in the message and it is printed as the last data character.


ISO/IEC 15417 Bar code symboIogy specification - Code 128
CODE 128 allows the full ASC 128 character set to be encoded. Each bar or space
can be one of four different unit widths. The narrowest possible bar or space will thus be
one quarter the width of the widest. t permits bidirectional scanning and theoretically,
there is no restriction on the number of characters allowed in each symbol.
Code 128 has three different character sets as Code Set A, Code Set B and Code Set
C. Any of these codes may be selected by appropriate selection of start character. The
Code 128 Specification requires the inclusion of a check digit. The check digit is a
Modulus 103 checksum.
Each character in the barcode symbol is composed of three bars and three spaces. The
stop character has four bars and three spaces.


ISO/IEC 16390 Bar code symboIogy specifications - InterIeaved 2-of-5 (ITF25)
!rimarily used in the warehouse industry, nterleaved 2 of 5 encodes any even number
of numeric characters in the width of both bars and spaces. t is called "nterleaved
because 2 characters are encoded in a unit of 5 bars and spaces. t uses both bar and
space width to encode information so the density of TF25 is much higher. nterleaved 2
of 5 is a numeric symbology and it character set only include 10 digital characters.