A diffractive barcode using diffusion-dot lines to form intersected bright bars with differentorientations

Abstract

Conventional barcodes can perform well for the data management of commercial products,but they cannot be used for anti-counterfeiting. Therefore, this paper will propose a newbarcode with macro- and micro-anti-counterfeiting features. A barcode image for aconventional barcode is composed of parallel bars with different widths, whereas abarcode image for the new barcode is composed of intersected bars with differentorientations. Codes for the proposed barcode are composed of bright bars alongfour possible orientations only. The proposed barcode pattern possesses manyparallel diffusion-dot lines. Because diffusion-dot lines can diffract a laser beamto form different bright bar arrangements corresponding to different codes, theproposed barcode is called a ‘diffractive barcode’ here. There are brightness andlength differences between the bars in a bright bar image and the differences aredifficult to counterfeit, so the macrofeatures can be used for anti-counterfeiting. Onthe other hand, because the appearances of the diffusion dots are special andthey cannot be reproduced, the microfeatures can be used for anti-counterfeiting.Moreover, both the encoding and decoding work of the diffractive barcode are easy.