Taraksh Journal of Communications / Page No.

6 / Volume 1 Issue 1

Embedding a Large Information In QR Code Using

Multiplexing Technique
Harish.N 1
M.Tech (DE&CS)
MMEC Belgaum
nharish123@hotmail.com

S.S Gurav 2
Asst. Professor
Dept of ECE, MMEC Belgaum
ssg.mmec@gmail.com

Abstract In this paper a novel approach to Embed a large data

in QR Code is presented.Using This Multiplexing technique QR
Code can store More information, as well as keeping secret
information. The original data for encoding is divided into smaller
parts, each part will form Separate QR Code pattern in its
standard form. Each pattern is encoded or multiplexed and
represented each module in QR Code with special symbols. At
the receiving end, this QR Code with special symbols (that was
multiplexed) is decoded to give back the number of QR Code
patterns that was multiplexed. These QR Code pattern can be
read by the general QR Code reader or Scanner or camera
phone and the data can be concatenated back to form its original
information.
Index TermsQR Code, capacity improvement, data hiding,
data security.

I. INTRODUCTION
QR Code is a type of 2-dimensional bar code in the form of
Matrix Code developed by Denso Wave[1]. QR Code provides
following features like High capacity of encoding of data
Small printout size,kanji and kana capability,Dirt and damage
Resistant,Readable from any direction in 360 degree. This bar
code contains information both in the vertical and horizontal
direction. The maximum data capacity, within version 40 of
the QR Code, is 7,089 numeric characters or 4,296
alphanumeric characters. There have been many researches in
the field of QR Code such as QR Code recognition using
mobile phone[2]. A new method of QR Code accumulation
encoding in mobile education was done by [3], a technique to
remove scratches from QR Code [4] and indentifying QR
Code by [5]. QR Code using invisible watermarking in
frequency domain was done by [6]. Data hiding method for
QR code based on DCT, DFT and DWT were compared by
[7],[8] and [9].
Even though QR Code can store information more than
other conventional bar codes, there is still research should be
carry out for improving storage capacity in the QR Code. A
High Capacity Colored Two Dimensional (HCC2D) code
which is a 2D code aims at increasing space available for data
was done by [10]. Five different RGB colors (red, green, blue,
black and white) were used to enable twice as much
information storage capacity to the QR Code [11]. Using
many colors to the code will increase the capacity but

2014 Taraksh. All Rights Reserved

may have more problems with the threshold due to the

intensity of light compared with the black and white image.
As the QR Code, has fixed data length within the same
version and the same error correcting level. It will be useful to
increase more data into QR Code within the same version and
the same error correcting level. That is if the maximum
number of characters to be included in version 6 with data
recovery rate at level L is 195 Alphanumeric [12] as shown in
Table I. To increase the number of characters more than the
maximum limit, the user has to go for a higher version of QR
Code. In this paper a novel approach to Embed a Large
Information in QR Code, while remaining in the same version
and recovery rate, is proposed. Section II shows QR Code,
Special Symbols used and an overview of this method.
Section III shows the experiment where the information was
divided into 3 parts.

II. METHODOLOGY
The original information message is divided, to form a
string of characters, into n parts, where n is the number of QR
Code pattern that can be formed by a string of characters in
each part as shown in Table II. The data in each is part is
encoded into ordinary QR Code corresponding to that part of
data. The module correspond to the same position in each QR
Code, except for the part of the Finder Pattern and Timing
Pattern are multiplexed and using a special black and white
symbol to represent them. The special symbols for
representing the modules, after multiplexing, are key board
special symbols are shown.. After that when this QR Code
with special symbols was scanned or read by optical device
such as a scanner or a camera phone, the picture image can be
analyzed.Using this picture image original information can be
read and the de multiplexing process decode the information
from single QR Code with special symbols and split the data
back to their QR Code pattern where these QR Code pattern
can be read by ordinary QR Code reader. The data in each QR
Code pattern were recognized and concatenated back to form
its original information message. The Algorithm for
Multiplexing and De mutiplexing is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3 shows the overview of Multiplexing and De
multiplexing method used in the experiment. Figure 4 shows
the experiment with 8 special symbols.

Taraksh Journal of Communications / Page No. 7 / Volume 1 Issue 1

QR Code
QR Code is a matrix symbol consists of arrays of nominally
square modules arranged in an overall square pattern. The
format of QR Code includes unique Finder Pattern (Position
Detection Patterns) located at three corners of the symbol and
can be used to locate the positioning of the symbol, size and
inclination. A wide range of sizes of symbol is provided
together with four levels of error correction. In the
experiment the Finder Pattern and the Timing Pattern in the
QR Code with special symbol are kept the same as in the
original QR Code as they were used in positioning and for the
spacing distance for the modules in horizontal and vertical
directions, respectively. The basic characteristic of QR Code
[1], [6] is explained as follows:

The lowest version is version 1 and the largest version is

version 40, where input data capacity in some of the versions
are summarized in Table I. [12]
TABLE I. INPUT DATA CAPACITY FOR QR CODE 2005
Version

1. Encodable character set

The experiment is focused on two types of data as follows:
1. Numeric data that is digits from 0 to 9.
2. Alphanumeric data that is digits from 0 to 9, upper and
lower case letters are from A to Z, and ten other characters are
space , $ % * + - . / :
2. Representation of data
A dark module represents a binary one and a light module
represents a binary zero.
3. Symbol size (not including quiet zone):
The number of modules is 21x21 modules to 177x177
modules starting from version 1 to version 40, increasing in
steps of 4 modules per side for each increasing version.
4. Data characters per symbol

40

Error
Correction
level
L
M
H
Q
L
M
H
Q
L
M
H
Q
L
M
H
Q
L
M
H
Q

Data Capacity
Numeric Alphanumeric
41
34
27
17
255
202
144
106
322
255
178
139
370
293
207
154
7089
5596
3993
3057

25
20
16
10
154
122
87
64
195
154
108
84
224
178
125
93
4296
3391
2420
1852

10
8
7
4
65
52
37
27
82
65
45
36
95
75
53
39
1817
1435
1024
784

5. Selectable error correction:

There are four levels (L, M, Q and H) of error correction using
Reed-Solomon technique allowing recovery of the symbol
code words:
1. Error correcting level L is 7%
2. Error correcting level M is 15%
3. Error correcting level Q is 25%
4. Error correcting level H is 30%

Fig. 1 Symbol Structure of QR Code

2014 Taraksh. All Rights Reserved

Kanji

Taraksh Journal of Communications / Page No. 8 / Volume 1 Issue 1

Special Symbols
The number of special symbols used is 2n where n is the
number of patterns in the QR Code as shown in Table II.
TABLE II. NO. OF SPECIAL SYMBOLS & NO. OF PATTERN
No. of QR Code
patterns
1
2
3
4
5

No. of Special symbols

(2n)
2
4
8
16
32

The number of patterns 3 was chosen in this paper as an

example, therefore there would be 8 special symbols needed to
implement this technique. Actually any characters on the
keyboard or any special character patterns or any special
symbols can be used. In this paper the special symbols were
chosen from the keyboard that are the symbols of \ / v
^ > <
and ~ !
O represents black module and 1 represents white module.

Fig. 2 Algorithm for Multiplexing and Demultiplexing

Fig. 3 Overview of multiplexing and demultiplexing method

2014 Taraksh. All Rights Reserved

Taraksh Journal of Communications / Page No. 9 / Volume 1 Issue 1

The corresponding module in the same position of each

pattern of QR Code is considered. If the color in the same
position of each QR Code is white, white, white (1 1 1) the
symbol \ is used in the QR Code with special symbols.
Some part of QR code that is not used for data and error
correction e.g. Finder Pattern and Timing Pattern were kept
the same and used for alignment as well as for separating each
special symbols for later recognition.
III. EXPERIMENT
The experiment was done with an example which had
Welcome to world of QR codes . as the original information.
This information is divided into 3 parts. i.e.Welcome to,
world of and QR Codes.. Data in each part are converted to
General QR Code to give 3 QR Code patterns. The
corresponding module in each pattern of QR Code was
multiplexed, except the finder pattern and timing pattern, to
form a QR Code with special symbols. At the receiving end, this
QR Code with special symbols was scanned and the image with
each special symbol representing a module was recognized by
the program and was demultiplexed to its original QR Code
patterns with 3 parts, i.e. Welcome to, world of and QR
Codes., that can be read by ordinary QR Code reader. The data
in each QR Code patterns were concatenated back to form its
original information, i.e. Welcome to world of QR codes.

Fig. 4 Experiment with 8 special symbols

IV. CONCLUSION

In this research, a novel method to Embed a Large information

in QR Code was achieved by using multiplexing. There was a
QR Code with three messages introduced. From this QR Code
with special symbols the data can be de multiplexed to give its
original information message correctly. In the experiment using
8 black and white symbols, the data in the QR Code can
increased 3 times. This will lead to more research in the area of
capacity improvement, security and information hiding in QR
Code.

2014 Taraksh. All Rights Reserved

V. REFERENCES
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[3] Xiao Yonan, Yang Chao, Luo Chunling, A new Method of
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conference
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[4] Kamon Homkajorn, Mahasak Ketcham, Sartid Vongpradhip,
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[5] Chanon Skawattananon, Mahasak Ketcham, Sartid
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