Patent ID: 8047440

Claim:
A method of decoding a bar code comprising: obtaining a digitized representation of a bar code with a bar code scanner, wherein the digitized representation is a Digital Bar Pattern (DBP) that includes at least a measure timed elapsed between consecutive detected edges of a differentiated signal related to an inverted reflectance pattern of the bar code; performing DBP decoding to determine whether the bar code can be fully decoded based on the DBP; estimating a set of parameters from the digitized representation; and only if the DBP decoding is unsuccessful, acquiring a waveform representation of the bar code based on at least one parameter in the set of parameters, the acquiring including selecting a sampling rate for acquiring the waveform representation, the sampling rate being based on at least one parameter in the set of parameters, and wherein a sample point in the waveform representation being represented by a multiple-bits value, and decoding the bar code using the estimated set of parameters and the sampling rate of the acquired waveform representation.