Although industry players downplay the technological aspect of laser scanner development, some technology developments bear watching. One is the general increase in scan rate. That means that if a user pulls the trigger on a high-quality symbol, the delay he or she sees has had little to do with the speed of the processor. However, one way to read damaged symbols is to search and search for a scan line that yields a decodable signal. With a 10-millisecond decode time, you can't fully exploit a scan rate above 100 scans per second.
Faster processing allows faster scan rates and better performance on marginal symbols.
Another scanning technology issue is the information provided to laser decode algorithms. In most cases today, all a decoder sees is a circuit's best guess on edge transitions. Higher processing power opens the door to economical processing of other information about the signal, such as total signal contrast. One technological advantage that imaging bar code readers hold over lasers is the amount of data provided to the decode routines. Closing this gap is a logical step for laser manufacturers.