Abstract

Improvements in optical disk media and drives have led to increased data transfer rates. One important aspect of the media format standard is the data encoding rate, which is specified by the recording channel modulation code and the forward error correction parameters. In this paper the relationship between data transfer rate and the encoding rate is investigated. We show that for a given data transfer rate the media CNR requirements can be minimized by proper selection of the data encoding rate. An important conclusion of this analysis is that M-ary channel codes minimize the CNR requirements for high data rate optical recording systems. Consequently, M-ary encoding is a very effective way of attaining data transfer rates above those achievable by conventional binary recording technologies.

© 1996 Optical Society of America