Patent ID: 7527202

Claim:
A hand-supportable planar linear illumination and imaging (PLIIM) based code symbol reading system comprising: a hand-supportable housing having a light transmission aperture; a planar laser illumination and imaging module (PLIIM), disposed in said hand-supportable housing, and including (i) a linear image detection array having optics providing a field of view (FOV) projecting on said linear image detection array and through said light transmission aperture, and (ii) at least one planar laser illumination module (PLIM) for producing a substantially planar laser illumination beam (PLIB) that extends substantially along the same plane as the FOV of said linear image detection array so as to provide a coplanar illumination and imaging plane that projects through said light transmission aperture, for capturing a series of linear (1-D) digital images of an object intersecting said coplanar illumination and imaging plane during illumination and imaging operations; an image frame grabber, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, for accessing 1-D digital images from said linear image detection array and composing one or more 2-D digital images of the object during illumination and imaging operations; an image data buffer, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, for buffering 2-D digital images received from said image frame grabber during illumination and imaging operations; a decode image processor, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, for processing said 2-D digital images stored within said image data buffer so as to read one or more code symbols graphically represented in said 2-D digital images; and a system controller, disposed in said hand-supportable housing, for controlling operations within said PLIIM-based code symbol reading system.