1.

INTRODUCTION

The needs for data storage in the world are increasing every day. “For Internet
applications alone, industry estimates are that storage needs are doubling every
100 days.”-Lucent Technologies. It is estimated that around 100TB of data will
be present in LANs by the year 2010. The data storage mechanism in today’s
world has been the Bit oriented approach wherein the data is stored in the form of
bits (0s & 1s) in the memory. If the data were to be stored in the form of images,
it will require much less space . This is where the concept of Holographic
Optical Data Storage (HODS) comes into the picture. HODS are the technique
of storing information using lasers into a photosensitive material in the form of
holographic images/holograms. The commonest material used for storage is a
LiNbO3 (Lithium Niobate) crystal or a photopolymer. The laser used is a Blue
Green Argon laser. Two of such beams are used in this method, one is known as
the Reference beam and the other is the Data/Object/Signal beam .The signal
beam after passing through a Spatial Light Modulator creates an interference
pattern with the reference beam on the Niobate crystal, thereby storing the
information carried by the data beam in the form of a holographic image. The
image may then be read out by passing the reference beam over the interference
pattern and observing the output beam using a Charge Coupled Device (CCD)
camera. The current research in this field is limited by the availability of good
quality photosensitive crystals as the crystal geometry is affected on increasing
the crystal size.

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 2. What is Holographic Storage?

Holographic Optical Data Storage (HODS) is a volumetric approach i.e. data

store in this technique in the whole volume. Polaroid scientist Pieter J. van
Heerden first proposed the idea of holographic (three-dimensional) storage in the
early 1960s. A decade later, scientists at RCA Laboratories demonstrated the
technology by recording 500 holograms in an iron-doped lithium-Niobate
crystal, and 550 holograms of high-resolution images in a light-sensitive polymer
material. In holographic data storage, an entire page of information is stored at
once as an optical interference pattern within a thick, photosensitive optical
material (Figure 1). This is done by intersecting two coherent laser beams within
the storage material. The first, called the object beam, contains the information to
be stored; the second, called the reference beam, is designed to be simple to
reproduce—for example, a simple collimated beam with a planar wave front. The
resulting optical interference pattern causes chemical and/or physical changes in
the photosensitive medium: A replica of the interference pattern is stored as a
change in the absorption, refractive index, or thickness of the photosensitive
medium. When the stored interference grating is illuminated with one of the two
waves that was used during recording [Figure 2(a)], some of this incident light is
diffracted by the stored grating in such a fashion that the other wave is
reconstructed. Illuminating the stored grating with the reference wave
reconstructs the object wave, and vice versa [Figure 2(b)]. Interestingly, a
backward-propagating or phase-conjugate reference wave, illuminating the stored
grating from the “back” side, reconstructs an object wave that also propagates
backward toward its original source [Figure 2(c)]. A large number of these
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interference gratings or patterns can be superimposed in the same thick piece of
media and can be accessed independently, as long as they are distinguishable by
the direction or the spacing of the gratings. Such separation can be accomplished
by changing the angle between the object and reference wave or by changing the
laser wavelength. Any particular data page can then be read out independently by
illuminating the stored gratings with the reference wave that was used to store
that page. Because of the thickness of the hologram, this reference wave is
diffracted by the interference patterns in such a fashion that only the desired
object beam is significantly reconstructed and imaged on an electronic camera.
The theoretical limits for the storage density of this technique are around tens of
terabits per cubic centimeter.

In addition to high storage density, holographic data storage promises fast

access times, because the laser beams can be moved rapidly without inertia,
unlike the actuators in disk drives. With the inherent parallelism of its page wise
storage and retrieval, a very large compound data rate can be reached by having a
large number of relatively slow, and therefore low-cost, parallel channels.

The data to be stored are imprinted onto the object beam with a pixelated
input device called a spatial light modulator (SLM); typically, this is a liquid
crystal panel similar to those on laptop computers or in modern camcorder
viewfinders. To retrieve data without error, the object beam must contain a high-
quality imaging system—one capable of directing this complex optical wave front
through the recording medium, where the wave front is stored and then later
retrieved, and then onto a pixelated camera chip (Figure 3). The image of the
data page at the camera must be as close as possible to perfect. Any optical
aberrations in the imaging system or misfocus of the detector array would spread

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energy from one pixel to its neighbors. Optical distortions (where pixels on a
square grid at the SLM are not imaged to a square grid) or errors in magnification
will move a pixel of the image off its intended receiver, and either of these
problems (blur or shift) will introduce errors in the retrieved data. To avoid
having the imaging system dominate the overall system performance, near-perfect
optics would appear to be unavoidable, which of course would be expensive.
However, the above-mentioned readout of phase-conjugated holograms provides
a partial solution to this problem. Here the reconstructed data page propagates
backward through the same optics that was used during the recording, which
compensates for most shortcomings of the imaging system. However, the detector
and the spatial light modulator must still be properly aligned. A rather unique
feature of holographic data storage is associative retrieval: Imprinting a partial or
search data pattern on the object beam and illuminating the stored holograms
reconstructs all of the reference beams that were used to store data. The intensity
that is diffracted by each of the stored interference gratings into the corresponding
reconstructed reference beam is proportional to the similarity between the search
pattern and the

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~5~
Content of that particular data page. By determining, for example, which
reference beam has the highest intensity and then reading the corresponding data
page with this reference beam, the closest match to the search pattern can be
found without initially knowing its address.

Because of all of these advantages and capabilities, holographic storage has

provided an intriguing alternative to conventional data storage techniques for
three decades. However, it is the recent availability of relatively low-cost
components, such as liquid crystal displays for SLMs and solid-state camera
chips from video camcorders for detector arrays, which has led to the current
interest in creating practical holographic storage devices. A team of scientists
from the IBM Research Division have been involved in exploring holographic
data storage, partially as a partner in the DARPA-initiated consortia on
holographic data storage systems (HDSS) and on photorefractive information
storage materials (PRISM).

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 The overall theme of research is the evaluation of the engineering tradeoffs
between the performance specifications of a practical system, as affected by the
fundamental material, device, and optical physics. Desirable performance
specifications include data fidelity as quantified by bit-error rate (BER), total
system capacity, storage density, readout rate, and the lifetime of stored data. This
paper begins by describing the hardware aspects of holographic storage, including
the test platforms we have built to evaluate materials and systems tradeoffs
experimentally, and the hardware innovations developed during this process.
Phase-conjugate readout, which eases the demands on both hardware design and
material quality, is experimentally demonstrated. The second section of the paper
describes our work in coding and signal processing, including modulation codes,
novel preprocessing techniques, the storage of more than one bit per pixel, and
techniques for quantifying coding tradeoffs. Then we discuss associative retrieval,
which introduces parallel search capabilities offered by no other storage
technology. The fourth section describes our work in testing and evaluating
materials, including permanent or write-once read-many-times (WORM)
materials, read write materials, and photon-gated storage materials offering
reversible storage without sacrificing the lifetime of stored data. The paper
concludes with a discussion of applications for holographic data storage.

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 3. Hardware for holographic data storage

Figure 3 shows the most important hardware components in a holographic storage

system: the SLM used to imprint data on the object beam, two lenses for imaging
the data onto a matched detector array, a storage material for recording volume
holograms, and a reference beam intersecting the object beam in the material.
What is not shown in Figure 3 is the laser source, beam-forming optics for
collimating the laser beam, beam splitters for dividing the laser beam into two
parts, stages for aligning the SLM and detector array, shutters for blocking the
two beams when needed, and wave plates for controlling polarization. Assuming
that holograms will be angle-multiplexed (superimposed yet accessed
independently within the same volume by changing the incidence angle of the
reference beam), a beam-steering system directs the reference beam to the storage
material.

The optical system shown in Figure 3, with two lenses separated by the
sum of their focal lengths, is called the “4-f” configuration, since the SLM and
detector array turn out to be four focal lengths apart. Other imaging systems such
as the Fresnel configuration (where a single lens satisfies the imaging condition
between SLM and detector array) can also be used, but the 4-f system allows the
high numerical apertures (large ray angles) needed for high density. In addition,
since each lens takes a spatial Fourier transform in two dimensions, the hologram
stores the Fourier transform of the SLM data, which is then Fourier-transformed
again upon readout by the second lens. This has several advantages: Point defects
on the storage material do not lead to lost bits, but result in a slight loss in signal-
to-noise ratio at all pixels; and the storage material can be removed and replaced
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in an offset position, yet the data can still be reconstructed correctly. In addition,
the Fourier transform properties of the 4-f system lead to the parallel optical
search capabilities offered by holographic associative retrieval. The disadvantages
of the Fourier transform geometry come from the uneven distribution of intensity
in the shared focal plane of the two lenses.

The SLM is a chrome-on-glass mask, while the detector array is a low-

frame-rate, 16-bit-per-pixel CCD camera. Custom optics of long focal length (89
mm) provide pixel matching over data pages as large as one million pixels, or one
megapel. A pair of precision rotation stages directs the reference beam, which is
originally below the incoming object beam, to the same horizontal plane as the
object beam. By rotating the outer stage twice as far as the inner, the reference-
beam angle can be chosen from the entire 360-degree angle range, with a
repeatability and accuracy of approximately one microradian. (Note, however,
that over two 30-degree-wide segments within this range, the reference-beam
optics occlude some part of the object-beam path.) The storage material is
suspended from a three-legged tower designed for interferometric stability (better
than 0.1 µm) over time periods of many seconds.

The system is equipped with argon (514.5-nm) and a krypton (676-nm)

laser, and all optics is optimized to work at both wavelengths. Beam-forming
optics and shutters control the power and polarization of the object and reference
beams, and relay optics over expand the object beam to ensure a uniform
illumination of the data mask. Precision linear stages control the position of the
data mask in two axes (allowing selection from a set of multiple patterns), the
Fourier lenses in one axis each (to control magnification), and the crystal position
in three axes. In addition, the crystal can be rotated about two axes, and the

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camera position controlled in three linear axes and one rotational axis. All stages
and shutters are under computer control, allowing direct operator control of the
system as well as unsupervised execution of long experiments. While the camera
uses 1024 × 1024 detector pixels on 9-µm centers, data masks are available with
pixel pitch of 36 µm (resulting in 65536 data pixels), 18 µm (262144 pixels), and
9 µm (1048576 data pixels, also known as a “megapel”). The baseline BER
performance of the system without a storage material (limited only by the
imaging system) was estimated to be 1 × 1018 with the low-resolution mask, 1 ×
1012 with the medium-resolution mask, and 1 × 107 with the megapel data mask.

The occurrence of intensity levels in the data page detected by the camera.
Since the data mask pattern of bright (“1”) and dark (“0”) pixels is known, the
intensity levels of each of these classes can be plotted separately. In the absence
of random noise and deterministic variations, all bright pixels would have the
same detected intensity, which would be well separated from the intensity of all
dark pixels, resulting in two spikes. Instead, the distribution of intensities makes
it more difficult to apply a single threshold and separate the bright and dark pixels
in the real data-retrieval scenario (for which the data mask pattern is, by
definition, unknown). While this particular page has no detected errors, the
distributions can be fitted with Gaussian approximations to provide a BER
estimate of 2.4 × 106. Since this hologram was retrieved using a readout pulse of
1 ms, this experiment implements the optical signal (but not the subsequent fast
electronic readout) of a system with a readout rate of 1 Gb/s.

The reference/object-beam geometry was restricted to the 90-degree

geometry, and the reference beam deflected with a galvanometrically actuated
mirror through a simple 4-f system, limiting the variation of the angle to ±10

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degrees. A transmissive liquid crystal SLM, capable of displaying arbitrary data
patterns, was pixel-matched onto a small, 60-Hz CCD camera in two stages. First,
a precision five-element zoom lens demagnified the SLM (640 × 480 pixels with
42-µm pitch) to an intermediate image plane (same pixel count on 18-µm pitch).
Then a set of Fourier lenses identical to those in the PRISM imaged this plane 1:1
onto the detector array (640 × 480 pixels, but 9-µm pitch). Because of the finer
pitch on the CCD, only the central 320 × 240 field of the SLM was detected. To
implement true pixel matching, the detector was aligned so that light from each
SLM pixel fell squarely on a single detector pixel (thus ignoring three of every
four pixels on the CCD). Laser light from the green 514.5-nm line of an argon-ion
laser was delivered to the platform with a single-mode polarization-preserving
optical fiber, which produces a clean Gaussian intensity profile. Optical power
delivered to the apparatus prior to the object/reference beam splitter was as much
as 400 mW. Simple linear stages move the SLM in two axes and the CCD in
three axes for alignment.

4. Phase conjugate Readout

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After the object beam is recorded from the SLM with a reference beam, the
hologram is reconstructed with a phase-conjugate (time-reversed copy) of the
original reference beam. The diffracted wave front then retraces the path of the
incoming object beam in reverse, canceling out any accumulated phase errors.
This should allow data pages to be retrieved with high fidelity with a low-
performance lens, from storage materials fabricated as multimode fibers, or even
without imaging lenses for an extremely compact system.

The Fourier lenses were removed, and the object beam was focused by a
lens through the megapel mask onto a mirror placed halfway between the mask
and CCD. After deflection by this mirror, the object beam was collected by a
second lens, forming an image of the mask. Here an Fe-doped LiNbO3 crystal
was placed to store a hologram in the 90-degree geometry. After passing through
the crystal, the polarization of the reference beam was rotated and the beam was
focused into a self-pumped phase-conjugate mirror using a properly oriented,
nominally undoped BaTiO3 crystal. In such a configuration, the input beam is
directed through the BaTiO3 crystal and into the far corner, creating random
backscattering throughout the crystal. It turns out that counter-propagating beams
(one scattered upon input to the crystal, one reflected from the back face) are
preferentially amplified by the recording of real-time holograms, creating the two
“pump” waves for a four-wave-mixing process. Since momentum (or wave-
vector) must be conserved among four beams (energy is already conserved
because all four wavelengths are identical), and since the two “pump” beams are

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already counter-propagating, the output beam generated by this process must be
the phase-conjugate to the input beam.

The crystal axes of the LiNbO3 were oriented such that the return beam
from the phase-conjugate mirror wrote the hologram, and the strong incoming
reference beam was used for subsequent readout. (Although both mutually phase-
conjugate reference beams were present in the LiNbO3 during recording, only the
beam returning from the phase-conjugate mirror wrote a hologram because of the
orientation of the LiNbO3 crystal axes. For readout, the phase-conjugate mirror
was blocked, and the incoming reference beam read this hologram, reconstructing
a phase-conjugate object beam.) By turning the mirror by 90 degrees, this phase-
conjugate object beam was deflected to strike the pixel-matched CCD camera.
We were able to store and retrieve a megapel hologram with only 477 errors
(BER 5 × 104) after applying a single global threshold. The experiment was
repeated with a square aperture of 2.4 mm on a side placed in the object beam at
the LiNbO3 crystal, resulting in 670 errors. Even with the large spacing between
SLM and CCD, this is already an areal density of 0.18 bits per µm2 per hologram.
In contrast, without phase-conjugate readout, an aperture of 14 mm × 14 mm was
needed to produce low BERs with the custom optics. The use of phase-conjugate
readout allowed mapping of SLM pixels to detector pixels over data pages of
1024 pixels × 1024 pixels without the custom imaging optics, and provided an
improvement in areal density (as measured at the entrance aperture of the storage
material) of more than 30.

Using a BaTiO3 crystal for phase conjugation and LiNbO3 for recording
data-bearing holograms of 320 pixels × 240 pixels. To demonstrate the phase-
conjugation properties, the two retrieved pages of Figure 5 illustrate the results of

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passing the object beam through a phase aberrator (a 1-mm-thick plastic plate).
Figure 5(a) shows the data page with only one pass through the plastic plate,
demonstrating conventional, non-phase-conjugate readout, while Figure 5(b)
demonstrates phase-conjugate readout, where the object beam passes through the
plate once during hologram storage and then again upon readout with the phase-
conjugate reference beam, correcting the phase aberrations.

One of the practical issues affecting the use of phase-conjugate readout is

the need to multiplex the reference beam in order to attain meaningful capacities.
Instead of the single pair of reference beams, a practical system would require as
many as a thousand pairs of reference-beam angles. If the two reference beams
are not true phase-conjugate pairs, the differences between them will distort the
resulting reconstructed data page. It is not yet clear how a practical system would
be able to guarantee this phase-conjugation relationship among many reference
beams.

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 5. Coding and Signal Processing

In a data-storage system, the goal of coding and signal processing is to reduce the
BER to a sufficiently low level while achieving such important figures of merit as
high density and high data rate. This is accomplished by stressing the physical
components of the system well beyond the point, at which the channel is error-
free, and then introducing coding and signal processing schemes to reduce the
BER to levels acceptable to users. Although the system retrieves raw data from
the storage device with many errors (a high raw BER), the coding and signal
processing ensures that the user data are delivered with an acceptably low level of
error (a low user BER).

The ECC(Error Correction Code) encoder adds redundancy to the data in

order to provide protection from various noise sources. The ECC-encoded data
are then passed on to a modulation encoder which adapts the data to the channel:
It manipulates the data into a form less likely to be corrupted by channel errors
and more easily detected at the channel output. The modulated data are then input
to the SLM and stored in the recording medium. On the retrieving side, the CCD
returns pseudo-analog data values (typically camera count values of eight bits)
which must be transformed back into digital data (typically one bit per pixel). The
first step in this process is a post processing step, called equalization, which
attempts to undo distortions created in the recording process, still in the pseudo-
analog domain. Then the array of pseudo-analog values is converted to an array
of binary digital data via a detection scheme. The array of digital data is then
passed first to the modulation decoder, which performs the inverse operation to
modulation encoding, and then to the ECC decoder. In the next subsections, we
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discuss several sources of noise and distortion and indicate how the various
coding and signal-processing elements can help in dealing with these problems.

5.1 Binary Detection

The simplest detection scheme is threshold detection, in which a threshold T is

chosen: Any CCD pixel with intensity above T is declared a 1, while those below
T are assigned to class 0. However, it is not at all obvious how to choose a
threshold, especially in the presence of spatial variations in intensity, and so
threshold detection may perform poorly. The following is an alternative.Within a
sufficiently small region of the detector array, there is not much variation in pixel
intensity. If the page is divided into several such small regions, and within each
region the data patterns are balanced (i.e., have an equal number of 0s and 1s),
detection can be accomplished without using a threshold. For instance, in sorting
detection, letting N denote the number of pixels in a region, one declares the N/2
pixels with highest intensity to be 1s and those remaining to be 0s. This balanced
condition can be guaranteed by a modulation code which encodes arbitrary data
patterns into codewords represented as balanced arrays. Thus, sorting detection
combined with balanced modulation coding provides a means to obviate the
inaccuracies inherent in threshold detection. The price that is paid here is that in
order to satisfy the coding constraint (forcing the number of 0s and 1s to be
equal), each block of N pixels now represents only M bits of data. Since M is
typically less than N, the capacity improvement provided by the code must exceed
the code rate, r = M/N. For example, for N = 8, there are 70 ways to combine
eight pixels such that exactly four are 1 and four are 0. Consequently, we can
store six bits of data (64 different bit sequences) for a code rate of 75%. The code

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must then produce a >33% increase in the number of holographic pages stored, in
order to increase the total capacity of the system in bits.

One problem with this scheme is that the array detected by sorting may not
be a valid codeword for the modulation code; in this case, one must have a
procedure which transforms balanced arrays into valid code words. This is not
much of a problem when most balanced arrays of size N are code words, but for
other codes this process can introduce serious errors. A more complex but more
accurate scheme than sorting is correlation detection, as proposed in. In this
scheme, the detector chooses the codeword that achieves maximum correlation
with the array of received pixel intensities. In the context of the 6:8 code
described above, 64 correlations are computed for each code block, avoiding the
six combinations of four 1 and four 0 pixels that are not used by the code but
which might be chosen by a sorting algorithm.

5.2 Error-correction

In contrast to modulation codes, which introduce a distributed redundancy in

order to improve binary detection of pseudo-analog intensities, error correction
incorporates explicit redundancy in order to identify decoded bit errors. An ECC
code receives a sequence of decoded data (containing both user and redundant
bits) with an unacceptably high raw BER, and uses the redundant bits to correct
errors in the user bits and reduce the output user BER to a tolerable level
(typically, less than 1012). The simplest and best-known error-correction scheme
is parity checking, in which bit errors are identified because they change the
number of 1s in a given block from odd to even, for instance. Most of the work on
ECC for holographic storage has focused on more powerful Reed Solomon (RS)
codes. These codes have been used successfully in a wide variety of applications
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for two reasons: 1) They have very strong error-correction power relative to the
required redundancy, and 2) their algebraic structure facilitates the design and
implementation of fast, low-complexity decoding algorithms. As a result, there
are many commercially available RS chips.

In a straightforward implementation of an ECC, such as an RS code, each

byte would be written into a small array (say 2 times 4 for 8-bit bytes), and the
bytes in a codeword would simply be rastered across the page. There might be
approximately 250 bytes per codeword. If the errors were independent from pixel
to pixel and identically distributed across the page, this would work well.
However, experimental evidence shows that the errors are neither independent
nor identically distributed. For example, interpixel interference can cause an error
event to affect a localized cluster of pixels, perhaps larger than a single byte. And
imperfections in the physical components can cause the raw BER to vary
dramatically across the page (typically, the raw BER is significantly higher near
the edges of the page). Assume for simplicity that our choice of ECC can correct
at most two byte errors per codeword. If the codewords are interleaved so that any
cluster error can contaminate at most two bytes in each codeword, the cluster
error will not defeat the error-correcting power of the code. Interleaving schemes
such as this have been studied extensively for one-dimensional applications (for
which cluster errors are known as burst errors). However, relatively little work
has been done on interleaving schemes for multidimensional applications such as
holographic recording. One recent exception is a class of sophisticated
interleaving schemes for correcting multidimensional cluster errors developed in.

For certain sources of error, it is reasonable to assume that the raw-BER

distribution is fixed from hologram to hologram. Thus, the raw-BER distribution

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across the page can be accurately estimated from test patterns. Using this
information, codewords can then be interleaved in such a way that not too many
pixels with high raw BER can lie in the same codeword (thereby lowering the
probability of decoder failure or miscorrection). This technique, known as
matched interleaving, introduced in, can yield a significant improvement in user
BER.

5.3 Predistortion

The techniques described above are variations on existing coding and signal-
processing methods from conventional data-storage technologies. In addition, a
novel preprocessing technique unique to holographic data storage has been
developed at IBM Almaden. This technique, called “predistortion”, works by
individually manipulating the recording exposure of each pixel on the SLM,
either through control of exposure time or by relative pixel transmission (analog
brightness level on the SLM). Deterministic variations among the ON pixels,
such as those created by fixed-pattern noise, nonuniformity in the illuminated
object beam, and even interpixel crosstalk, can be suppressed (thus decreasing
BER). Many of the spatial variations to be removed are present in an image
transmitted with low power from the SLM directly to the detector array. Once the
particular pattern of nonuniform brightness levels is obtained, the recording
exposure for each pixel is simply calculated from the ratio between its current
brightness value and the desired pixel brightness.

5.4 Grayscale

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The previous sections have shown that the coding introduced to maintain
acceptable BER comes with an unavoidable overhead cost, resulting in somewhat
less than one bit per pixel. The predistortion technique described in the previous
section makes it possible to record data pages containing gray scale. Since we
record and detect more than two brightness levels per pixel, it is possible to have
more than one bit of data per pixel. The histogram of a hologram with six gray-
scale levels made possible by the predistortion technique. To encode and decode
these gray-scale data pages, we also developed several local-thresholding
methods and balanced modulation codes.

If pixels take one of g brightness levels, each pixel can convey log2 g bits
of data. The total amount of stored information per page has increased, so gray-
scale encoding appears to produce a straightforward improvement in both
capacity and readout rate. However, gray scale also divides the system's signal-to-
noise ratio (SNR) into g 1 parts, one for each transition between brightness
levels. Because total SNR depends on the number of holograms, dividing the
SNR for gray scale (while requiring the same error rate) leads to a reduction in
the number of holograms that can be stored. The gain in bits per pixel must then
outweigh this reduction in stored holograms to increase the total capacity in bits .

5.5 Capacity Estimation

To quantify the overall storage capacity of different gray-scale encoding options,

we developed an experimental capacity-estimation technique. In this technique,
the dependence of raw BER on readout power is first measured experimentally.
The capacity-estimation technique then produces the relationship between M, the
number of holograms that can be stored, and raw BER. In general, as the raw
BER of the system increases, the number of holograms, M, increases slowly. In
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order to maintain a low user BER (say, 1012) as these raw-BER operating point
increases, the redundancy of the ECC code must increase. Thus, while the number
of holograms increases, the ECC code rate decreases. These two opposing trends
create an “optimal” raw BER, at which the user capacity is maximized. For the
Reed Solomon ECC codes we commonly use, this optimal raw BER is
approximately 103. By computing these maximum capacities for binary data
pages and gray-scale data pages from g = 2 to g = 6, we were able to show that
gray-scale holographic data pages provide an advantage over binary encoding in
both capacity and readout rate. The use of three gray levels offered a 30%
increase in both capacity and readout rate over conventional binary data pages.

6. Recording Materials

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Materials and media requirements for holographic datastorage
Thus far, we have discussed the effects of the hardware, and of coding and signal
processing, on the performance of holographic data storage systems. Desirable
parameters described so far include storage capacity, data input and output rates,
stability of stored data, and device compactness, all of which must be delivered at
a specified (very low) user BER. To a large extent, the possibility of delivering
such a system is limited by the properties of the materials available as storage
media . The connections between materials properties and system performance
are complex, and many tradeoffs are possible in adapting a given material to yield
the best results. Here we attempt to outline in a general way the desirable
properties for a holographic storage medium and give examples of some
promising materials.Because holography is a volume storage method, the capacity
of a holographic storage system tends to increase as the thickness of the medium
increases, since greater thickness implies the ability to store more independent
diffraction gratings with higher selectivity in reading out individual data pages
without crosstalk from other pages stored in the same volume. For the storage
densities necessary to make holography a competitive storage technology, a
media thickness of at least a few millimeters is highly desirable. In some cases,
particularly for organic materials, it has proven difficult to maintain the necessary
optical quality while scaling up the thickness, while in other cases thickness is
limited by the physics and chemistry of the recording process.

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 Holographic Thickness
Material Image quality Scatter Stability
fidelity (mm)

LiNbO3:Fe +++ +++ + 0 10

LiNbO3
++ ++ + ++ 10
(Two-color)

Polaroid
+++ 0 + 0.5
photopolymer

PQ/PMMA + + ++ 2

Bayer
photo-
+++ 0 ++
addressable
polymer

Table 1 : Comparison of properties of prospective materials for

holographic data storage

media.

7. Advantages
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 With three-dimensional recording and parallel data readout, holographic
memories can outperform existing optical storage techniques. In contrast the
currently available storage strategies, holographic mass memory simultaneously
offers high data capacity and short data access time (Storage capacity of about
1TB/cc and data transfer rate of 1 billion bits/second).

Holographic data storage has the unique ability to locate similar features
stored within crystal instantly. Data pattern projected into a crystal from the top
searches thousands of stored holograms in parallel. The holograms diffract the
incoming light out of the side of the crystal, with the brightest outgoing beams
identifying the address of the data that most closely resemble the input pattern

This parallel search capability is an inherent property of holographic data

storage and allows database to be searched by content. Because the interference
patterns are spread uniformly throughout the material ,it endows holographic
storage with another useful capability: high reliability. While a defect in the
medium for disk or tape storage might garble critical data ,a defect in a
holographic medium doesn't wipeout in formation. Instead ,it only makes the
hologram dimmer. No rotation of medium is required as in the case of other
storage devices. It can reduce threat of piracy since holograms can’t be easily
replicated.

8. Disadvantages

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Manufacturing cost HDSS is very high and there is a lack of availability of
resources which are needed to produce HDSS. However, all the holograms appear
dimmer because their patterns must share the material's finite dynamic range.In
other words, the additional holograms alter a material that can support only a
fixed amount of change.

Ultimately, the images become so dim that noise creeps into the read-out
operation, thus limiting the material's storage capacity. A difficulty with the
HDSS technology had been the destructive readout. There-illuminated reference
beam used to retrieve the recorded information, also excites the donor electrons
and disturbs the equilibrium of the space charge field in a manner that produces a
gradual-erasure other recording. In the past, this has limited the number of reads
that can be made before the signal-to-noise ratio becomes too low. Moreover,
writes in the same fashion can degrade previous writes in the same region of the
medium. This restricts the ability to use the three-dimensional capacity of a photo
refractive for recording angle-multiplexed holograms. You would be unable to
locate the data if there's an error of even a thousandth of an inch.

9. Future Applications
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Holographic systems also have tremendous potential with respect to large-scale
data processing and learning. With two-dimensional media, data is read in a serial
manner based on location, not similarity of content. The ability of holographic
data systems to read an entire (million bit) page simultaneously opens up
qualitatively different methods of data access and searching. With holographic
data systems, one may compare patterns of data using parallel processing and
associative retrieval properties -- searching large quantities of data to identify
relationships. The interface of holography and robotics may create "holobots" that
learn through creative identification of meaningful patterns in large quantities of
data. Eventually, optical neural networks may be possible using holographic
technology.

Potential forms for holographic data media include holographic media

disks ("holodisks") and cubes ("holocubes"). The storage media must be
accessible to light, but also resilient in construction. Modest-sized holodisks or
holocubes may hold upwards of a terabyte of data. When holographic media can
only be recorded once, it is holographic read-only memory ("holoROM"). When
holographic media can be repeatedly accessed and written in real time, then it can
serve as holographic random access memory ("holoRAM").

Holographic technology has been in use for decades for art and
entertainment. Even basic holograms with alternating perspectives can be
beautiful works of art whose interactive qualities engage the viewer. Dynamic
holographic images in high-technology amusement park attractions routinely
engage and thrill riders.Holographic technology is already being used to record
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holographic DVDs over a hundred gigabytes in size. Future holodisks and
holocubes may store up to a terabyte. In the coming decade, new holographic
technology applications will come from the hybridization of computer gaming,
internet access, and television. Some applications will be multi-user, interactive,
three-dimensional entertainment experiences.

There are numerous potential applications of holographic data systems in

the general area of communications and imaging. "Holocams" will use
holographic data storage and retrieval to archive and virtually display three-
dimensional visual environments. Holographic computer displays and interfaces,
including gesture recognition systems, will allow much more natural human-
computer interaction than is possible with current two-dimensional displays and
keyboard/mouse. Holographic imaging with temporal gated pulses will enable
clear viewing of objects embedded in light refracting matter such as body fluid or
translucent atmospheres.

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 Holographic technology can also create new methods for three-dimensional
visual communication from computers to humans. This starts with screen
displays with enhanced three-dimensional projection qualities and then progresses
to freestanding, three-dimensional computer projections that do not require a
screen.

Design is central to engineering, new product design and prototyping,

architecture and construction, biotechnology and nanopharmacology, chemistry
and molecular modeling, medicine and bionics, the apparel industry, the fine arts,
and other areas as well. Holographic technology can help design for:
manipulation of three-dimensional models of molecules or biological structures;
assembling electronics; and other design-related tasks.

Holographic prototypes of new products can be developed and viewed in a

fraction of the time required by physical prototyping and modeling processes

9.1 Holographic laser cubes are the wave of the future, think about it in

this context.

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 • With current technology a 1cm^3 laser cube is equal to:

• 694444 1.44MB floppy discs

• 1429 700MB CD-ROMs

• 250 4GB DVDs

• 4 250GB hard drives

9.2 With predicted technology a 1cm^3 laser cube is equal to:

• 694 444 1.44MB floppy discs

• 14286 700MB CD-ROM’s

• 2500 4GB DVD’s

• 40 250GB hard drives

10. Conclusion

Holographic data storage has several characteristics that are unlike those of any
other existing storage technologies. Most exciting, of course, is the potential for
data densities and data transfer rates exceeding those of magnetic data storage. In
addition, as in all other optical data storage methods, the density increases rapidly
with decreasing laser wavelength. In contrast to surface storage techniques such

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as CD-ROM, where the density is inversely proportional to the square of the
wavelength, holography is a volumetric technique, making its density
proportional to one over the third power of the wavelength. In principle, laser
beams can be moved with no mechanical components, allowing access times of
the order of 10 µs, faster than any conventional disk drive will ever be able to
randomly access data. As in other optical recording schemes, and in contrast to
magnetic recording, the distances between the “head” and the media are very
large, and media can be easily removable. In addition, holographic data storage
has shown the capability of rapid parallel search through the stored data via
associative retrieval.

Will one of these scenarios with data stored in holograms materialize and become
reality in the foreseeable future? In collaboration and competition with a large
number of scientists from around the globe, we continue to study the technical
feasibility of holographic storage and memory devices with parameters that are
relevant for real-world applications. Whether this research will one day lead to
products depends on the insights that we gain into these technical issues and how
well holography can compete with established techniques in the marketplace.

11. Bibliography

[1].www.lucent.com/press/0101/010130.bla.html

[2].http://www.research.ibm.com/research/press/holographic.html

[3].http://www.imation.com/about/news/newsitem/0%2C1233%2C298%2C

00.html

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[4].http://www.pitt.edu/~drew1/2089/holo.htm

[5].http://www.sciam.com/2000/0500issue/0500toigbox5.html

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