A principal goal of the Mission to Planet Earth (MtPE) is to produce and deliver to customers an immense quantity of information products. Data and Information Systems (DIS) is therefore a key support technology for the entire MtPE enterprise. Holographic data storage products will enable unprecedented performance in the collection, transmittal, and processing of the vast amounts of data to be generated. These holographic storage devices have applications as solid-state data recorders on board satellites, as data buffers through out the satellite data network to equalize data rates and increase autonomy, and as large-scale distribution and archiving systems for the delivery and processing of the final data. A critical component of this technology is a channel encoding optimized for holographic data storage. Optitek has a number of operating digital holographic storage systems including the storage engine and digital encoding and control hardware. ASU is developing advanced two-dimensional source-channel codes for this application. In this STTR program, we will combine these resources to instrument, characterize, and optimize a holographic storage system using this advanced channel encoding system. In Phase II these optimized codes will be implemented in Optitek's custom FPGA hardware to prototype a key component of EOSDIS. 7. Potential Commercial Application(s): Information storage is currently a $50B business and is growing at an explosive pace as users at every level demand fingertip access to bank records, medical images, online resources, home entertainment material and every other conceivable kind of information. Existing and anticipated data storage systems based on two dimensional media fall short of the requirements of new information services because they cannot simultaneously meet the need for high capacity, short access times, and fast transfer rates required for image files and multi-user environments. Holographic storage, which does meet these needs, is poised to capture a significant section of this large and expanding market
