A Directly Readable Halftone Multifunctional Color QR Code

Abstract

Color quick response (QR) code is an important direction for the future development of QR code, which has become a research hotspot due to the additional functional characteristics of its colors as the wide application of QR code technology. The existing color QR code has solved the problem of information storage capacity, but it requires an enormous hardware and software support system, making how to achieve its direct readability an urgent issue. This paper proposes a novel color QR code that combines multiple types of different identification information. This code combines multiplexing and color-coding technology to present the publicly encoded information (such as advertisements, public query information) as plain code, and traceability, blockchain, anti-counterfeiting authentication and other information concealed in the form of hidden code. We elaborate the basic principle of this code, construct its mathematical model and supply a set of algorithm design processes, which breakthrough key technology of halftone printout. The experimental results show that the proposed color quick response code realizes the multi-code integration and can be read directly without special scanning equipment, which has unique advantages in the field of printing anti-counterfeiting labels.