Experiments Towards An Erasable Compact Disc Digit
Experiments Towards An Erasable Compact Disc Digit
Experiments Towards An Erasable Compact Disc Digit
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Article in Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. Audio Engineering Society · July 1984
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light output is usefully captured by an objective lens modulation by the analyzer and detected by an avalanche
with a numerical aperture of 0.3. The parallel beam detector. During recording and reading a small part of
traverses a "sun-glass" sheet polarizer, a 10% and a the light (10%) is coupled out to the tracking (push-
25% mirror, and is focused on the disk by means of an pull) and focusing optics (Foucault double-wedge
objective with a numerical aperture of 0.6. The half- method). An automatic gain control is incorporated in
width of the light spot is slightly smaller than 1 txm. order to compensate for the large difference in light
During information recording the laser is pulsed with power during recording and reading. An oscilloscope
a pulse duration of 50 ns at intervals of 250 ns. The trace of the digital signal delivered by the avalanche
peak power is 60 mW; due to losses in the light path, detector is shown in Fig. 4. Local erasure of the in-
10 mW is available in the focused light spot. formation is done in two steps:
A magnetic domain generated by a single light pulse 1) While the laser is delivering pulses every 250 ns,
has a circular shape with a diameter of typically 1 Ixm. the external magnetic field is reversed. The whole track
Oblong domains are generated by several light pulses surface is now magnetized in the original direction.
being delivered at 250-ns intervals. The size of the 2) New information is recorded in the normal way.
domains is slightly influenced by the strength of the It has been measured so that the information in neigh-
magnetic field generated by the coil behind the disk. boring tracks is unaffected by the erasure of a track.
Depending on the coercive force of the storage layer The signal-to-noise ratio remains unaltered.
at room temperature (typically 80 kA/m), this auxiliary
field varies between 10 and 20 kA/m. 2 SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO CONSIDERATIONS
Fig. 3 shows a polarization-microscope photograph Since the magnetooptical effect is small, the signal-
of written domains in the pregrooved spiral on a disk. to-noise ratio of the detected signal is limited. Fig. 5
The domain sequence represents a typical Compact- shows the detection arrangement consisting of an and-
Disc-like signal with oblong domains of discrete lengths, lyzer (detection angle 13) that is almost crossed with
The minimum domain length (not the bit length) is 2
respect to the incident plane of polarization. The azimuth
i_m; the spacing between tracks is 1.7 i_m. of the plane of polarization is modulated by the magnetic
When detecting written domains the laser is pulsed domains (top-top excursion 20 is 0.7°).
at a high frequency (13 MHz) with a duty cycle of 0.25
When the instantaneous azimuth of the plane of po-
and a peak power of 8 mW. On the disk a quasi-con- larization is represented by an angle a, the light power
tinuous power of 0.3 mW is available, which is low
after passage through the analyzer is given by
enough not to perturb the recorded domains. The mirror
with a 25% reflectivity throws reflected light onto an
analyzer whose transmitting direction is almost at 90 ° P(13, a) = Po sin 2 (13 - a)
with respect to the entrance polarizer. The rotation of
where Po is the light power incident on the analyzer.
the plane of polarization of the reflected light due to Supposing a and 13to be small and 13not equal to 0,
the magnetic domains is converted into an intensity we approximate this expression by
AIGoAs /
' / LV_
Il-
Pi
modu,a,on
given by
d pth
theetecto'sr,_ow
laser _ ' '( J_ g"-kJ
'_ lin I \ .
NA=0.3/ T=90% T=75 Yo NA=0.6 J',lmagnetic m -- JJ, .
polarizer H co,I tan13
The noise current consists of several contributions:
Fig. 2. Optical light path for recording and polarization- 1) Thermal noise
sensitive readout. optical
from a standard When the
diskanalyzer
(such asisaremoved,
Compact the signals
Disc) can 2) Amplifier noise
bedetected. 3) Darkcurrentnoise
532 J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 32, No. 7/8, 1984 July/August
ENGINEERING REPORTS ERASABLE COMPACT DISC DIGITAL AUDIO SYSTEM
4) Photon shot noise iav denotes the average detector current, N 2 is the var-
5) Surface noise of the disk. iance of the detector current, and B is the measuring
When an avalanche detector is used, the photon noise bandwidth.
and the surface noise become predominant. Assuming the noise to be the superposition of photon
A general expression for the carrier-to-noise ratio and surface noise, we obtain
CNR is
N 2 = 2qiav + Clx2iav 2
CNR = 1/2S2/BN 2
where q is the elementary charge andC a constant that
where S is the amplitude of the signal given by characterizes the surface noise power. The photon noise
contribution has a white spectrum, but the surface noise,
S = miav , as the signal itself, is affected by the optical modulation
Fig. 3. The magnetic domain structure as seen in a polarization microscope with almost crossed polarizers.
Fig. 4. Eye pattern of detected magnetic domain structure. The tangential velocity approximately equals 3 m/s.
J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 32, No. 7/8, 1984 July/August 533
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AND
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534 J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 32, No. 7/8, 1984 July/August
ENGINEERING
REPORTS ERASABLE
COMPACT
DISCDIGITAL
AUDIOSYSTEM
modulator output. The backgrounds to the choice of to measure characteristic properties of the magneto-
certain maximum and minimum run lengths are briefly optical channel is the pulse-length distribution mea-
outlined in the following. If the clock regeneration is surement described in Sec. 4.3.
derived from the actual readout data, which is normally
the case, then level transitions yield the synchronizing 4.1 Measurementof Carrier-to-Noise Ratio
information. A small maximum distance between tran-
We recorded a pure frequency of 500 kHz on the
sitions benefits the worst-case clock regeneration. A
large minimum run length decreases the maximum fre- disk at different linear velocities. The frequency was
quency of the modulation stream, so that the bandwidth chosen equal to 500 kHz because the signal power of
requirements of the channel may be reduced, the EFM modulation system is maximum in this fre-
State-of-the-art high-power solid-state lasers have a quency region. We measured the different noise levels
limited time during which they can emit a light pulse, relative to the detected
over a bandwidth of 10signal
kHz. power, always
The noise integrating
level that de-
and they can only be used in the pulsed mode, which
naturally leads to modulation systems using (unity) termines the final carrier-to-noise ratio is due to surface
roughness of the disk. In nonrecorded regions and
domain position modulation. We can, however, use equally on an aluminum-coated disk this noise level is
domain-length modulation, with its much higher space identical. A characteristic Value is - 44 dB when the
efficiency, if we record the domain lengths as overlap- scanning velocity is 3.25 m/s (see Fig. 8). As should
ping unit domains, be expected in the case of surface noise, the noise level
In Fig. 7(a) we have depicted as an example a binary
modulation stream that has to be recorded on the disk. increases when the tangential velocity is decreased.
T is a channel bit time. The domain lengths are integral Other noise sources are photon noise, amplifier noise,
multiples i of T, with certain minimum and maximum and dark current noises. The photon noise can be mca-
bounds of i. By electronic means we derive a pulse sured separately from disk surface noise when the disk
sequence [Fig. 7(b)]. If the signal in Fig. 7(a) is high, is not rotating. This noise level is - 48 dB with respect
then a domain has to be recorded, resulting in the vis- to the signal. Dark current noise and amplifier noise
are at a level of at least -56 dB.
ualized domain pattern plotted in Fig. 7(c).
Designing and building real-time (de)modulators is 4.2. Measurement of Bit Error Rates
a time-consuming activity, especially when a wide range
of codes has to be tested. We proceeded therefore in a Following the procedure described in Sec. 4, we have
way used before in experiments with a Te-based storage detected bit error rates by comparing a detected bit
medium. We programmed a number of PROMs so that sequence with the originally recorded sequence. An
they contained short binary sequences satisfying acer- important parameter is the linear scan velocity that
tain modulation rule. All PROMs contained a frame influences the carrier-to-noise ratio and consequently
sync pattern of 27 bits and a sequence of 561 bits sat- the bit error rate. The measured 44-dB carrier-to-noise
isfying the modulation rule. The frame sync pattern ratio yields a bit error rate of 10 -5 or less, and the few
was identical in all experiments. The PROMs were
periodically read out with a clock frequency of 4 MHz. T
The angular velocity of the disk was adjusted to the :__
desired tangential information density. After writing .__ _ [_1 o
one or more tracks, we read out using the repeat track [ IIll Ill I Il b
feature. The signal from the avalanche detector was
further electronically processed (digitized, clock re- G _ _ ¢
covery, frame sync, etc.). The binary processed signal
was now compared with the output of a PROM con- Fig. 7. Electronic translation of a pulse-width modulation
into a signal usable for a pulsed mode laser.
taining the original sequence. The PROM was syn-
chronized by the frame sync pulses derived from the
recovered information. In this way we were able to
generate a sequence of bit errors that could be inves-
tigated for its statistics, such as number of single-bit CUR _10d8
J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 32, No. 7/8, 1984 July/August 535
IMMINK
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1
of fig. 9(b) and (d) with velocities of 4.0 and 2.5 m/s,
respectively. To correct for the asymmetry, one (or j /xJ-,__,_
more) of the successive laser pulses can be deleted.
536 d. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 32, No. 7/8, 1984 July/August
ENGINEERING
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DISCDIGITAL
AUDIOSYSTEM
500 1000 1500 2000 2500 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
tins] = tins]
(f) (g)
500 1000 1500 2000 2500 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
.- t[nsl -. tins]
(h) (i)
Fig. 9. Pulse-length distribution as a function of linear density (arbitrary vertical axis) for different tangential speeds. (f)
2.25 m/s. (g) 2.25 m/s, one pulse deleted for asymmetry correction. (h) 2 m/s. (i) 2 m/s, one pulse deleted.
The high-frequency signal from the Compact Disc's music signal (up to 2 MHz) look promising.
photodiode was electronically processed and fed to the
magnetooptical recorder. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
With a linear bit density of 40% of the Compact Disc The authors are indebted to many researchers at the
density the music was recorded and reproduced with Philips Research Laboratories. They particularly wish
the same performance as obtained from a Compact to thank M. Urner-Wille, K. Witter, and J. Reck of
Disc player. PFH Hamburgwho provided the magnetoopticallayers.
The experimental setup for recording the music is P. Vromans and J. Ramaker supplied the pregrooved
equally suited for playing back standard compact disks disks. R. Aarts and J. Kahlman designed the electronics
manufactured for a consumer Compact Disc player, of the experimental setup.
only the analyzer sheet must be removed.
7 REFERENCES
5 CONCLUSIONS
[l] P. Chaudhari, J. J. Cuomo, and R. J. Gambino,
Thermomagnetic recording on pregrooved disks (track IBM J. Res. Dev., vol. 17, p. 66 (1973).
spacing 1.7 gm) has been demonstrated with domain [2] M. Urner-Wille,J. Mag. Mat., pp. 15-18 (1980).
dimensions in the micrometer range. The signal-to- 1339-1340.
noise ratio of the detected signal is sufficient for an [3] M. Urner-Wille, P. Hansen, and K. Witter, IEEE
error-free recovery of a digital music signal according Trans. Magn., vol. MAG-16, no. 5 (1980).
to the Compact Disc standard. The information density [4] J. P. J. Heemskerk, Appl. Opt., vol. 17, p. 2007
in the track direction is 40% of the density on a Compact (1978).
Disc. At the present time the density is limited by disk [5] L. B. Vries, K. A. Immink, J. G. Nijboer, H.
Hoeve, J. Timmermans, L. M. Driessen, T. T. Doi,
surface roughness and not by random variations in do- K. Odaka, S. Furukawa, I. K. Iwamoto, Y. Sako, H.
main dimensions. Ogawa, and T. Itoh, "The Digital Compact Disk:
Erasure of recorded domains has been accomplished Modulation and Error-Correction Schemes," presented
in two stages (one erase step and one writing step), at the 67th Convention of the Audio Engineering So-
Preliminary experiments with real-time overwriting by ciety, J. Audio Eng. Soc. (Abstracts), vol. 28, p. 931
modulating the external magnetic field with a digital (1980 Dec.), preprint 1674.
d. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 32, No. 7/8, 1984 July/August 537
IMMINKANDBRAAT ENGINEERING
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THE AUTHORS
x
K.Immink J. Braat
Kees Schouhamer immlnk joined the the Philips Re- servo, acoustical, and modulation systems.
search Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in
1968. After part-time studies, he obtained a master's ·
degree in electronic engineering at the Eindhoven Uni-
versity of Technology. Joseph Braat graduated from Delft Technical Uni-
He then joined the measurement and control group versity in 1970 and wrote his thesis during a three-
of the Philips Laboratories to do research on servo year stay at the French Institut d'Optique in Paris. The
systems for the laser video system, subject was holography using spatially incoherent light.
In 1979 he joined the optical recording group working In 1973 he joined the optics group of the Philips Re-
on channel codes for optical disk systems, in particular search Laboratories in Eindhoven and became active
the digital audio Compact Disc system, in the field of optical recording, scanning, microscopy,
Mr. Immink holds several patents in the fields of and lens design.