A Survey on QR Codes: in context of Research and Application

QR code is the type of matrix barcode, which was first designed for the automotive industry by Denso Wave in Japan. The QR Code system has become admired outside the automotive industry due to its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to standard UPC barcodes. This paper take account of QR codes basics, its real time application in day to day life and research areas associated. With the technology of mobile phones constantly emerging, especially in the area of mobile internet access, QR codes seem to be an adequate tool to quickly and efficiently converse URLs to users. This also allows offline media such as magazines, newspapers, business cards, public transport vehicles, signs, t-shirts and any other medium that can embrace the print of a QR code to be used as carriers for advertisements for online products. QR code being so versatile because of its structural flexibility that it leads to so many diverse field for research such as increasing data capacity, security applications such as different kinds of watermarking and steganography as well. Some experiments have also been done for better recognition of the QR code image that includes scratch removal techniques. Thus, this paper is an attempt to highlight some of possible research areas while considering QR codes. Keywords— QR code, Universal Product Code (UPC), watermarking, security, data capacity, scratch removal.