Reading Analysis for Barcode Scanner With Interference from LED-Based Lighting

This paper addresses reading failures of a barcode scanner interfered by light emitting diode (LED) lamps. It quantifies the reading performance in terms of timing signal-to-interference ratio (TSIR), in particular, as a function of modulation depth and frequency of the interference from modulated LED lighting. At the decision variable, the interference typically generated in the LED driver by a switched mode power supply (SMPS) is neither additive nor Gaussian. It has frequencies up to several MHz that can seriously affect the barcode reading performance. To calculate the signal and interference power for TSIR, the laser scanner physical channels are analyzed, including the laser beam path and the LED interference path. Since barcode scanners usually use peak or edge detection, the reading reliability is subject to the first and second derivatives of the LED inference, respectively. We validate the proposed TSIR for predicting scanner reading performance by experiments. For instance, we found that typical scanners reach a specified sensitivity at a TSIR value of around 50. We further investigate the reading performance under multi-frequency interference, e.g., interference from the harmonics of the SMPS control signal. In general, this paper presents a simple, yet realistic model to quantify the reading performance in terms of TSIR for barcode scanner subject to single-frequency LED interference, and it proposes an empirically verified flicker interference metric (FIM) for multi-frequency interference.