HOLOGRAPHIC STORAGE TECHNOLOGY
By
AURORA ENGINEERING COLLEGE
BHONGIR
ABSTRACT
Magnetic and optical tape storage
systems are cost-effective for archival
storage, when data access time is less
critical. At the other extreme, flash
memory, which is a solid-state
semiconductor approach, offers
extremely fast data access time at
relatively low packing density but at
high cost. We believe that holographic
mass memory systems will have
distinctive appeal for applications that
require both high capacity and short data
access time
Our paper deals with a new storage
technology that is under development
and is named as holographic technology.
Holographic storage uses two laser
beams, a reference and a data beam to
create an interference pattern at a
medium where the two beams intersect.
This intersection causes a stable physical
or chemical change which is stored in
the medium. This is the write sequence.
During reading, the action of the
reference beam and the stored
interference pattern in the medium
recreates this data beam which may be
sensed by a detector array.
We start with its evolution,
hardware requirements, principle of
holographic systems that says how does
it work actually, applications,
advantages.
In order to study the recording physics,
materials, and systems issues of
holographic digital data storage in depth,
we have built three precision
holographic recording testers. The three
testers, described in the following
sections, are called the PRISM tester, the
DEMON I platform, and the DEMON II
platform.
History
Dennis Gabor: The ‘‘Father’’ Of
Holography
• Gabor’s research on holography
was originally intended to
increase the resolving power of
the electron microscope.
• His first holograms were made of
normal (non-coherent) light.
 • His theories found real
application only after the
discovery of the laser.
In late 1995 a joint university, industry
and government consortium initiated the
Holographic Data Storage System
(HDSS) programme, with the initial
goals of developing several key
components for the system, including a
high-capacity, high-bandwidth spatial
light modulator used for data input;
optimised sensor arrays for data output;
and a high-power red-light,
semiconductor laser
IBM Research Division - believes that
holograms could hold the key to high-
capacity data storage in the next
millennium. Large amounts of data can
be stored holographically because lasers
are able to store pages of electronic
patterns within special optical materials
as opposed to just on the surface. In
traditional holography, each viewing
angle gives a different aspect of the
same object. With holographic storage,
however, a different 'page' of
information is accessed.
Hardware requirements
1. Laser
2.Spatial Light Modulator
3.lenses
4.storage material
5. detected array
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,
beamsplitters 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 waveplates for controlling
polarization.
Holographic storage system
In its basic form, a hologram is the
photographic record of the spatial
interference pattern created by the
mixing of two coherent laser beams. One
of the beams usually carries spatial
information and is labeled the "object"
beam. The other is distinguished by its
particular direction of travel and is
labeled the "reference" beam.
Illuminating the recorded hologram with
the reference beam will yield or
reconstruct the object beam and vice
versa. As the holographic material
becomes thicker, the reconstruction
becomes very sensitive to the particular
angle of incidence of the reference
beam, which allows multiple objects to
be recorded in the same volume and
accessed independently by using an
appropriate set of associated reference
beams. Such holograms would be
recorded sequentially, each object beam
illuminating the holographic material
simultaneously with its unique reference
beam.
The angularly selective property of
holograms recorded in thick materials
enables a unique form of high-capacity
data storage distinguished by its parallel
data access capability. A holographic
data storage system is fundamentally
page-oriented, with each block of data
defined by the number of data bits that
can be spatially impressed onto the
object beam. The total storage capacity
of the system is then equal to the product
of the page size (in bits) and the number
of pages that can be recorded.
A holographic data storage system can
be constructed to exploit this principle
by using a spatial light modulator to
properly shape the object beam, an
optical beam scanner to point the
reference beam, a detector array to
convert the reconstructed output object
data into an electronic bit stream,
electronics to control the entire process
and condition the input/output electronic
information, and a sufficiently powerful
laser to overcome the optical losses of
the system.
In practice, the number of holograms
that can be stored and reliably retrieved
from a common volume of material is
limited to less than 10,000 so that spatial
multiplexing techniques must be used.
Although solid-state designs are
possible, it is easiest to envision a
storage material formed as a volume disk
in which holograms in a particular cell
are stored and retrieved by angular
multiplexing and where random access
to arbitrary cells is enabled by rotation
of the disk.
Working
Holographic storage uses two laser
beams,
a
reference and a data beam to create an
interference pattern at a medium where
the two beams intersect. This
intersection causes a stable physical or
chemical change which is stored in the
medium. This is the write sequence.
During reading, the action of the
reference beam and the stored
interference pattern in the medium
recreates this data beam which may be
sensed by a detector array. The medium
may be a rotating disk containing a
polymeric material, or an optically
sensitive single crystal. The key to
making the holographic data storage
system work is the second laser beam
which is fired at the crystal to retrieve a
page of data. It must match the original
reference beam angle exactly. A
difference of just a thousandth of a
millimeter will result in failure to
retrieve the data. Holography is expected
to be of value in archival or library
storage applications where large
quantities of data are required to be
retained at the very lowest costs
possible.
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
wavefront through the recording
medium, where the wavefront is stored
and then later retrieved, and then onto a
pixelated camera chip).
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 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
were 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.
HDDS Testers
• PRISM
The PRISM tester [6, 7], built as
part of the DARPA
PhotoRefractive Information
Storage Materials consortium,
was designed to allow the
rigorous evaluation of a wide
variety of holographic storage
materials. This tester was
designed for extremely low-
baseline BER performance,
flexibility with regard to sample
geometry, and high stability for
both long recording exposures
and experimental repeatability.
The salient features of the
PRISM tester are shown in
Figure . 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 direct
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 secondary
optics occupy approximately 2
feet by 4 feet of optical table
space, and the tower and stages
approximately 4 feet by 4 feet
The system is equipped with an argon
(514.5-nm) and a krypton (676-nm)
laser, and all optics are 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
overexpand 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 camera position
controlled in three linear axes and one
rotational axis.
• DEMON I
While PRISM was designed to handle
any conceivable material testing
requirement, the DEMON I platform [8],
shown in Figure, was built to be a
platform for evaluating coding and
signal processing techniques. 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 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 beamsplitter was as
much as 400 mW. Simple linear stages
move the SLM in two axes and the CCD
in three axes for alignment. The entire
system, not including the laser, occupies
18 × 24 inches of optical table space.
Figure 6
The first experiment performed on the
DEMON I tester was the demonstration
of multiple hologram storage at low raw
BER (BER without error correction)
using modulation codes, which allow
decoding over smaller pixel blocks than
the global thresholding described above.
Using an 8-mm-thick LiNbO :Fe crystal
3
storage medium and a strong modulation
code (8:12), 1200 holograms were
superimposed and read back in rapid
succession with extremely low raw BER
(<2 × 10 ) [8]. Subsequently, many of
8
the codes and signal-processing
algorithms and techniques described
later in this paper were either refined or
invented on the DEMON I system. In
addition, the DEMON I platform has
been used to implement both associative
retrieval and phase-conjugate readout, as
described below.
• DEMON II
The DEMON II holographic storage
platform, shown in Figure, was
designed to achieve high-density
holographic data storage using short-
focal-length optics, while including
aspects of the previous two test
platforms. DEMON II combines the
large data pages of the PRISM tester
with the dynamic SLM and the 90-
degree geometry configuration of the
DEMON I platform. Here, the SLM is a
reflective device fabricated by IBM
Yorktown [9], containing 1024 × 1024
pixels and illuminated via a polarizing
beamsplitter cube. A novel apodizer,
described in the next section, provides
uniform illumination over the entire data
page without sacrificing input power.
The magnification from the 12.8-µm
pitch of the SLM pixels to the 12-µm
pitch of the 41-Hz CCD camera (1024 ×
1024 pixels, 41 frames per second) is
built into the Fourier optics (effective
focal length 30 mm). A pair of scan
lenses provide an improved relay of the
reference beam from the
galvanometrically actuated mirror to the
LiNbO crystal, providing diffraction-
3
limited performance over an angular
scan range of ±15 degrees.

Statstics
Holographic recording
properties are characterized in terms of
sensitivity and dynamic range.
Sensitivity refers to the extent of
refractive index modulation produced
per unit exposure (energy per unit area).
Diffraction efficiency (and thus the
readout signal) is proportional to the
square of the index modulation times the
thickness. Thus, recording sensitivity is
commonly expressed in terms of the
square root of diffraction efficiency, :
S 2 = ( ½) / (I t), (1)
where I is the total intensity, is the
medium thickness, and t is the exposure
time.
The term dynamic range refers to the
total response of the medium when it is
divided up among many holograms
multiplexed in a common volume of
material; it is often parameterized as a
quantity known as M# (pronounced “M-
number” [39]), where
M# = ½
, (3)
and the sum is over the M holograms in
one location .
storage system
A Holographic Storage Device Is A Page
Oriented Device That Writes And Reads
Data, Represented As A Two
Dimentional Array Of Spot Called A
Page. Multiple Pages Are Multiplexed
Holographically To Create A Stack Of
Pages, All In The Space Normally
Required To Store A Single Two
Dimentional Image.
Stack site: 1 mm2
3000 stacks 40 pages per stack
( 1 gigabyte) (320 Kbytes)
64K bits per page
Multimedia Floppy Organization

Fig- multimedia floppy storage
Advantages
• Store information
throughout the whole
volume of the medium
instead of just the surface as
with other storage
technologies.
• Uses fewer or no moving
parts at all, thus allowing
greater data processing
speeds.
• Hold more information than
100 compact disks of the
same diameter
• Can read 64,000 bits at one
time, compared to to just
one or two bits with
magnetic storage.
• Provides unique robustness
and error insensitivity
• A hologram contains as
much as 300,000 times more
informationthan an ordinary
viLarge Data Density/
Capacity
• Uses optics instead of read-
write heads, and uses whole
volume of medium instead
of just surface as with
conventional devices.
• Better Reliability Uses less
moving parts (or no moving
parts).
Applications
The different areas on where this
applications used are
Video on demand
Partable computing
Multimedia
Consumer audio/video
Multimedia - a single minute of
compressed video takes up to 12 Mbytes
Data Warehouses - large corporations’
warehouse taking more than 2 Tbytes
World Wide Web - one vendor’s high-
end Web server packs 128 Gbytes of
disk
Mass memory applications -
holographic mass memory
simultaneously offers high data capacity
and short data access time
Conclusions
1. Breakthrough In Holographic
Memory Could Transform
DataAccess” Microbytes
 2. .holography..a new
paradigm for managing
and accessing mass storage
is bein developed.
3. Holographic technology will
give us ‘Holovideo’: A
system that produces three
dimentional holographic
image in real time”
4. Holographic storage is the
best type of data storage
technology that can meet the
requirements of today’s
growing databases”
5. Holographic data storage is a
technology whose capcity
dwarfs even that of optical
disks, while giving you faster
access to your data.
THANKING YOU
To d a y’s specialized computer
applications demand extraord i n a ry
data storage capacity and
quick access. Despite the recent capacity
and perf o rmance improvements of
magnetic and
optical disks, these emerging
applications still re q u i re more—a
fundamentally diff e re n t
a p p roach that combines a quantum
increase in storage with faster access.
Holography provides
such an appro a c h .
• Mostly the
holographic
interferometric
techniques have been
used for biomedical
applications.
• X-ray holography
can be applied for
imaging of internal parts
of the body
a holographic memory system that
combines quick access with dense
storage. HM-100, can store up to 1,000
images, for a total of 1 gigabyte of
storage. The HM-100 has a very fast
internal image processing rate,so that
many images can be compared quickly.
The entire database of 1,000 images can
be scanned in one second.
first HM-100 is done on fingerprint
identification. This system functions as a
holographic “lock” that can store up to
1,000 fingerprints as holograms. To gain
entry to a room, one places a finger on a
glass plate. The fingerprint must match
one of the holograms in the system’s m e
m o ry.
In addition to fingerprint identification,
the HM-100 offers a compact and low-
cost altern a t i v e
to the large, expensive CD-ROM
“jukeboxes” that now store data for
hospitals, libraries, and
banks. Holoplex’s system could save
businesses both time and money,
replacing their systems with a single 3-D
holographic disk
 Stack site: 1 mm2

3000 stacks 40 pages per stack

(1 gigabyte) (320 Kbytes)

64K bits per page

Multimedia Floppy Organization