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Holographic Versatile Disc: High speed information storage systems

Conference Paper · November 2010

DOI: 10.1109/ICUMT.2010.5676486 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 2010 International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops (ICUMT)

technologies. It can transfer data at the rate of 1

Holographic Gigabit per second. The technology permits over 10
kilobits of data to be written and read in parallel with
Versatile Disc: High a single flash. The disk will store 1 terabyte (TB) of

Speed Information data on a single optical disk.

This emerging technology has been in the works (at

Storage Systems least conceptually) for about 20 years. It wasn't until
the beginning of the 21st century that real advances
Arun Rana, Ojaswani Arora, Nidhi Syal, Prabhdeep
Singh were made, however. Holographic disk storage
allows for much higher density than DVDs by storing
ranaarun1@gmail.com,prabhsingh13@gmail.com,
ojus.88@gmail.com,nidhi_leo08@yahoo.co.in data as light patterns throughout the volume of the
polymer disc, or three dimensions. HVD can
Maharishi Markandeshwar Engineering apparently store up to 60 times the data of a regular
College,Mullana
DVD and it can read and write data 10 times faster as
well.

Abstract

Holographic information storage systems (HISS) have

2. WHAT IS HVD?
been a good candidate for a volumetric recording
technology due to their large storage capacities and high
Definition:-Holographic versatile disc (HVD) is a
transfer rates. Recently, revival of activity in HISS has
holographic storage format that looks like a DVD but
resulted from the dramatic developments in systems,
is capable of storing far more data. Prototype HVD
such as laser technology, spatial light modulators
(SLM) and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor devices have been created with a capacity of 3.9

(CMOS) image sensors. Holographic Versatile Disc terabytes (TB) and a transfer rate of 1 gigabit per
(HVD) system using Collinear Technology, a new second (1 Gbps). At that capacity, an HVD could
technology for HISS, is proposed and demonstrated by store as much information as 830 DVDs or 160 Blue-
OPTWARE Corporation. This technology can produce ray disc.
a small, practical HISS more easily than conventional 2-
axis holography. To increase capacity, holographic storage uses laser
beams to store digital data in three dimensions, rather
Keywords: What is HVD, Basics of Holographic
than in two dimensions as in CD and DVD media.
Memory, Basics of Holographic Memory,
HVD is, essentially, a holographic layer built on top
Structure of HVD.
of a conventional disc. The HVD process uses a blue-

1. Introduction green laser beam, used for reading and writing data,
collimated (made parallel) with a red laser beam,
An HVD is an advanced optical disk that’s presently
which is used for servo and tracking. HVD uses the
in the development stage. An HVD would be a
concept of holographic memory.
successor to today’s Blue-ray and HD-DVD
 Most of us think of holograms as storing the image of
an object. The holographic memory systems we're
discussing here use holograms to store digital instead
of analog information, but it's the same concept.
Instead of the information beam encountering a
pattern of light that represents the object, it
Fig.1: HVD encounters a pattern of light and dark areas that
represent ones and zeroes.

3. Basics of Holographic Memory

The first step in understanding holographic memory

is to understand what "holographic" means.
Holography is a method of recording patterns of light
to produce a three-dimensional object. The recorded
patterns of light are called a hologram.

The process of creating a hologram begins with a

focused beam of light -- a laser beam. This laser
beam is split into two separate beams: a reference
beam, which remains unchanged throughout much of
the process, and an information beam, which passes

through an image. When light encounters an image

its composition changes. In a sense, once the
information beam encounters an image, it carries that
image in its waveforms. When these two beams
intersect, it creates a pattern of light interference. If
Fig 2: Pattern of 0’s and 1’s
you record this pattern of light interference -- for
Fig 3: Digital Hologram
example, in a photosensitive polymer layer of a disc -
- you are essentially recording the light pattern of the
image.
4. TECHNOLOGY USED IN HVD
To retrieve the information stored in a hologram, you
HVD uses a technology called 'collinear holography,'
shine the reference beam directly onto the hologram.
in which two laser rays, one blue-green and one red,
When it reflects off the hologram, it holds the light
are collimated into a single beam. The role of the
pattern of the image stored there. You then send this
blue-green laser is to read the data encoded in the
reconstruction beam to a CMOS sensor to recreate
form of laser interference fringes from the
the original image.
holographic layer on the top, while the red laser
serves the purpose of a reference beam and also to
read the servo info from the aluminum layer - like in
normal CDs - near the bottom of the disk. The servo
info is meant to monitor the coordinates of the read
head above the disk (this is similar to the track, head
and sector information on a normal hard disk drive).
How do the laser beams selectively pass through the
layers? A layer of dichroic mirrors that exists
between the holographic and servo data layer reflects
back the blue-green laser beam, letting only the red
laser pass through it to reach the servo information.
By doing so, it actually eliminates the possible
chances of the interference that can happen due to the
refraction of blue-green laser off the servo data pits, a
problem that had affected the efficiency of many
holographic store age media in the past.
Fig 4: Collinear Holographic System
The concepts of collinear holographic memories
are:
• To increase the recording capacity, thick
volume-recording media is used
• A batch of two-dimensional page data is
recorded and reconstructed as a hologram to
improve transfer rates
• The optical disk is pre-formatted with
addresses and optical servo information
• The beam for the optical servo is utilized to
provide backward compatibility with the
existing CDs or DVDs
5. STRUCTURE OF HVD
In HVD system, the green (or blue) and red laser
beams are combined to the same axis and are
transmitted through a single objective lens. For this
reason, a special disc structure of HVD has been
designed. Figure shows the six layers structure
schematically. In order to eliminate the diffraction
noise into the recording media caused by the
embossed pits, a dichroic mirror interlayer is used.
The red laser beam for optical servo control will
reach to the pre-format reflection layer. However, the
Fig.5 Collinear Holography Optics
green (or blue) laser beams for forming hologram is
perfectly reflected by this dichroic mirror interlayer.
Figure shows image quality comparison between (a)
with and (b) without dichroic mirror interlayer,
respectively. The dichroic mirror interlayer
eliminates diffraction noise effectively.
 • CMOS sensor
• Photopolymer recording medium

Fig 6: HVD Structure

6. HOW HVD WORKS?

Fig 7: HVD Write System
It employs a technique known as collinear
holography, whereby two lasers, one red and one The process of writing information onto an HVD

green, are collimated in a single beam. The green begins with encoding the information into binary data

laser reads data encoded as laser interference fringes to be stored in the SLM. These data are turned into

from a holographic layer near the top of the disc ones and zeroes represented as opaque or translucent

while the red laser is used as the reference beam and areas on a "page" -- this page is the image that the

to read servo information from a regular CD-style information beam is going to pass through.

aluminium layer near the bottom. Servo information

is used to monitor the position of the read head over
the disc, similar to the head, track, and sector
information on a conventional hard disk drive. On a
CD or DVD this servo information is interspersed
amongst the data.
7. HVD SYSTEM: WRITING DATA
Once the page of data is created, the next step is to
fire a laser beam into a beam splitter to produce two
identical beams. One of the beams is directed away
from the SLM -- this beam becomes the reference
beam. The other beam is directed toward the SLM
and becomes the information beam. When the
information beam passes through the SLM, portions
of the light are blocked by the opaque areas of the
page, and portions pass through the translucent areas.

A simplified HVD writing system consists of the In this way, the information beam carries the image
following main components: once it passes through the SLM

• Blue or green laser (532-nm wavelength in When the reference beam and the information beam
the test system) rejoin on the same axis, they create a pattern of light
• Beam splitter/merger interference -- the holography data. This joint beam
• Mirrors carries the interference pattern to the photopolymer
• Spatial light modulator (SLM) disc and stores it there as a hologram.

Fig 8: Written Pattern
8. The HVD System: Reading Data
To read the data from an HVD, you need to retrieve
the light pattern stored in the hologram.
In the HVD read system, the laser projects a light
Fig 10: HVD Read System
beam onto the hologram -- a light beam that is
identical to the reference beam (Read System 1 in
the image above). The hologram diffracts this beam
according to the specific pattern of light interference
it's storing. The resulting light recreates the image of
the page data that established the light-interference
pattern in the first place. When this beam of light --
the reconstruction beam -- bounces back off the
disc, it travels to the CMOS sensor. The CMOS
sensor then reproduces the page data.
9. HVD Capacity
• The entire US Library of Congress can be
stored on six HVDs, assuming that every
book has been scanned in the text format.
The Library of Congress is the largest in the
world and contains over 130 million items.
• The pictures of every landmass on Earth -
like the ones shown in Google Earth - can be
stored on two HVDs.
• With MPEG4 ASP encoding, a 3.9 TB HVD
can hold anywhere between 4,600-11,900
hours of video, which is enough for non-stop
playing for a year.
10. Advantages, Disadvantages &
Applications of HVD
Advantage: Naturally, it can store a tremendous
amount more than current competitors. It reads and
writes incredibly quickly and for the price you are
getting what you pay for. Fortunately, the price of
HVD, as well as all other formats, will drop
dramatically through the coming years.
Disadvantage: The initial price of the player and
discs themselves are far more expensive than HD-
DVD or Blue-ray. It could be argued that the public
is not entirely ready for even the costs or benefits of
Blue-ray or HD-DVD, much less HVD. None of the
prices or storage capacities are completely confirmed
as HVD is still under heavy R&D.
 Application: HVD will of course be used for storing HVD could store as much information as 830 DVDs
large amounts of data most likely for large or 160 Blue-ray disc.
companies. Due to the shear amount it can store, it
could be e most efficient way to backup information
in the near future. In the future it could be possible to BIBLIOGRAPHY
be used as a new movie format or possibly for
software. 1. Hideyoshi Horimai and Y.Aoki,
“Holographic versatile disc(HVD) System”
Optical
11. Future Aspects 2. data storage Topical Meeting 2006, 2006
The Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is the stealth page(s):6-8.
player in the protracted struggle; the rapidly 3. Hideyoshi Horimai and Xiaodi Tan,
emerging technology is capable of storing “Holographic Information Storage System:
(eventually) 3.9 TB of data on a CD/DVD sized disc. 4. Today and Future,” Magnetics,IEEE
Transactions on Volume 43/Issue2,part 2
Beyond this extraordinary capacity roughly the
5. feb2007, page(s):943-947.
equivalent of 800 DVDs, the format’s zippy 1 Gbps 6. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/hvd.ht
throughput has tremendous implications in the
m
commercial, industrial and d-Cinema realms. HVD’s
7. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/hvd1.h
massive storage will undoubtedly find wide use for
tm.
backup and archiving in media libraries, including at 8. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/hvd2.h
the Hollywood studios where the highest value digital
tm.
assets are generally stored on tape and systematically
9. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/hvd3.h
re-archived every seven years to assure long-term tm.
integrity. 10. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/hvd4.h
tm.
12. CONCLUSION
11. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/hvd5.h
Holographic memory has been around for more than tm.
40 years, but several characteristics made it difficult
to implement in a consumer market. But the
evolution of collinear technology finally led to the
materialization of this concept for data storage and
gives birth to Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD).
HVD is a holographic storage format that looks like a
DVD but is capable of storing far more data.
Prototype HVD devices have been created with a
capacity of 3.9 terabytes (TB) and a transfer rate of 1
gigabit per second (1 Gbps). At that capacity, an

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