SBIR Phase II: Novel Coded High Density Optical Disk Data Storage

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II research project aims to develop a high-density optical disk storage prototype based on a new coding concept that will result in the prototype development of a compact packaged high-density optical disk storage system that is back compatible with current optical disk. Using such coding concept can significantly increase the disk data storage density and data access rate based on a modification of existing optical disk recording/readout hardware architecture. The new high density disk drive allows back compatibility with the current DVD disk and has advantage of easier market acceptance for product roll out than other developing storage technologies such as holographic and near field storages. The near term objective is to achieve 50 GB/disk capacity and more than 100 GB/disk is the next foreseeable product goal. If successful, the outcome of this project will enhance the availability of high-density low cost storage for many social applications, increasing US based data storage technologies, and increasing US jobs. It will have extensive commercial and military applications such as computer data storage, on-line storage, library archival applications, image storage, and processing for medical applications, and military target identification and fast access to large intelligent databases. Educational impacts include advancing library archive storage for educational uses and benefiting university research in astronomy, meteorology and others that require huge data storage.