Patent ID: 7077329

Claim:
A method of decoding information encoded by the positions and intensities of spectral lines in the emission spectrum of quantum dots in a carrier medium, wherein a set of codes in a code book is characterized by different combinations of said positions and intensities, comprising: exciting the quantum dots in said carrier medium to initiate fluorescence; sensing the resulting emission spectrum of the quantum dots; performing a deconvolution operation to separate the spectral lines in said emission spectrum; processing the resulting data to find the positions and intensities of the spectral lines in said emission spectrum; and extracting the decoded information by reference to said code book; and wherein the de-convolution operation is represented by the equation Σ i k(λi)·δ(λ−λi)=IFT {FT[f(λ)]/FT[p(λ)]}, where δ(λ) represent an impulse function, k(λi) is the intensity of a δ(λ) at λi, p(λ) denotes the profile function of the spectrum of quantum dots.