Abstract

Access speeds in optical storage media are limited by the optical power budget. By using acousto-optics, sequential read out of angularly multiplexed volume holograms can be achieved with page times as short as 1 ns. With 10⁶ pixels per page, the data rate of such a system is 10¹⁵ samples per second. This exceeds the input bandwidth of all signal processing technologies except optical signal processing. Additionally, given the efficiency of angularly multiplexed holograms, the optical power required to reliably detect data at this bandwidth is excessive. The optical power budget constraints can be alleviated if the system that follows the rapid-access page-mode hologram has signal processing gain. We explore the use of optical correlators with a relatively slow external data input and matched filters stored in the volume hologram. The matched filters are accessed extremely rapidly by utilizing acousto-optic Bragg cells to cycle through the angularly multiplexed volume hologram pages. The correlators provide the signal processing gain to alleviate the signal to noise constraints on a system with up to 10¹⁵ reference samples per second data rate.

© 1992 Optical Society of America