Development of the UPC-A Barcode Recognition Algorithm for Smartphone Applications

This paper is about a bar code decoding algorithm developed for smart phone applications. The algorithm consists of bar code data extraction procedure, bar code signal estimation procedure, and bar code decoding procedure. To detect the peak bar code module, a DSTW had been applied because of its outstanding performance in ECG peak detection. In order to minimize errors due to non-uniform light effect, the proposed algorithm was acted as a baseline wandering filter based on module peaks detection. The algorithm had been tested to evaluate the performance under the conditions of blurring, non-uniformed light and white noises. The algorithm had shown excellent performance in reconstruction of bar code decoding, compared to other conventional methods. In order to show the possibility of applying the algorithm to a smart phone, a real UPC-A type 150 bar code pictures obtained from a smart phone camera was applied to the algorithm, achieving the correct recognition rate of 97.33%.