Abstract:
A recording apparatus for optical data includes a photo detection IC for producing a plurality of phase signals; a plurality of sample/hold (S/H) circuits electrically connected to the photo detection IC; a plurality of limiter circuits electrically connected to the photo detection IC; a channel signal generator connected to the S/H circuits; and a level shift circuit connected to an output of the channel signal generator. The recording apparatus for optical data prevents the interference of servo signal during high speed operation and ensures normal operation of S/H circuits thereof.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0001]     1. Field of the Invention  
         [0002]     The present invention relates to a recording apparatus for optical data, more particularly to a recording apparatus for optical data, which uses limiter circuit to attenuate a reference voltage to minimize the influence of writing power to servo signal.  
         [0003]     2. Description of Prior Art  
         [0004]     The optical pick-up head in recording apparatus needs several servo control mechanism during the reading or recording optical data. For example, the laser of the pick-up head requires focusing control to control the focus point in vertical direction of optical disk and tracking control to control the focus point in radial direction of optical disk. Therefore, the laser can be precisely focused along the spiral track of the optical disk by feedback control of the servo controller.  
         [0005]      FIG. 1  shows a schematic diagram of recording apparatus for optical disk.  
         [0006]     To provide servo signal for error detection and servo control, a semi-cylinder lens  14  is placed in front of a photo detection IC  16  along the optical path. The semi-cylinder lens  14  provides different depth of focus along a vertical direction and a horizontal direction. In case that the recording apparatus for optical disk uses quad detector to detect optical signal, the quad detector will sense signal of different spiral shapes when the laser is moved in depth or radial direction.  
         [0007]     When the laser has correct focusing in vertical direction, the laser will form a circle spot on the photo detection IC  16 . When the laser has incorrect focusing in vertical direction, the laser will form spiral spot of different slopes on the photo detection IC  16 . The spiral spot of different slopes can be used to create focus error (FE) signal.  FIG. 2  shows a schematic diagram of FE signal generator. An FE signal is obtained by the arithmetic operation (A+C)-(B+D) and is output at an output end Vo.  
         [0008]     Moreover, the optical disk generally has pre-grooves thereon. The laser beams reflected from the pre-grooves have asymmetric shape when the laser is not focused on center of track. The servo controller can produce track error (TE) signal according to the asymmetric signal reflected from the pre-grooves.  
         [0009]      FIG. 3  shows a prior art push-pull circuit for processing the optical signals, wherein the push-pull signal (A+C)-(B+D) is output at Vo. The wobble signal of the optical disk can also be resolved from the push-pull signal. To enhance the resolution of the optical signals, as shown in  FIG. 1 , an optical grating  12  is provided to divide the optical beams into multiple ones such as three optical beams. The multiple optical beams will be processed to obtain FE, TE, and RF_SUM signal. The photo detection IC  16  is exemplified with four detectors (quad detectors), it should be noted detectors of  8 ,  12  or other numbers could be used for the photo detection IC  16 .  
         [0010]     The recording layer of write-once disk and re-write disk is generally a dye layer.  FIG. 4  shows a prior art recording circuit for optical disk.  FIG. 5A  shows a writing signal produced by the recording circuit shown in  FIG. 4 ;  FIG. 5B  shows a reflection coefficient resulted from the writing signal; and  FIG. 5C  shows a detection result of the photo detection IC  16  with respect to the writing signal shown in  FIG. 5A .  
         [0011]     As shown in  FIG. 4  and  FIG. 5A , an encoder  22  is used produce the writing pulses and an ALPC (auto laser power control)  24  controls the laser power according to the writing pulses. The laser impinges on an optical disk  18  to write data thereon. As shown in  FIG. 5A , a mask signal  30  with a higher writing power is used to write a logical one (1) data and a space signal  32  with a lower reading power is used to write a logical zero (0) data. The encoder  22  produces a series of mask signal  30  and space signal  32  according to the data to be recorded and the ALPC  24  controls laser power according to the series of mask signal  30  and space signal  32 .  
         [0012]     As shown in  FIG. 5B , the reflection coefficient of the disk is reduced by the higher writing power. The laser power does not instantaneously reach high level and the reflection coefficient of the disk has gradual change as shown in  FIG. 5B . Therefore, the detection result of the photo detection IC  16  has waveform shown in  FIG. 5C .  
         [0013]      FIG. 6  shows a prior art photo detection IC  16  with sample/hold (S/H) circuit  20 . The S/H circuit  20  is incorporated to each channel of the photo detection IC  16  to prevent jitter in output signal of the photo detection IC  16 . The S/H circuit  20  generally works quite well in low speed recording operation of the recording apparatus for optical data.  
         [0014]     The operation voltage of analog front end (the circuit portion connected to the photo detection IC  16 ) is now reduced to about 3.3V due to the progress in semiconductor manufacture. However, the operation voltage of the photo detection IC  16  is still maintained at 5V. In high speed recording operation of the recording apparatus for optical data, the prior art recording apparatus for optical data may have problem because the photo detection IC  16  output a higher voltage (such as 4V) than the operation voltage of analog front end.  FIGS. 7A and 7B  show switch circuit connected before the S/H circuit  20 . The NOT gate  36  shown in  FIG. 7A  is implemented by PMOS M 3  and NMOS M 4  shown in  FIG. 7B . It should be noted the output V 1  is always smaller than the AFE (analog front end) voltage VCC. When the control voltage V 1  is at high state, the PMOS M 1  is at low voltage and the NMOS M 2  is at high voltage. When the control voltage V 1  is at low state, the PMOS M 1  is at high voltage and the NMOS M 2  is at low voltage. The control voltage V 1  is smaller than the AFE voltage VCC because those MOS transistors are powered by AFE voltage VCC. If VCC is 3.3V, then the control voltage V 1  must be smaller than 3.3V. The PMOS transistor is turned on when gate-source voltage Vgs is larger than a threshold voltage Vth. The PMOS transistor is turned off when gate-source voltage Vgs is smaller than the threshold voltage Vth. The control voltage V 1  must be smaller than the AFE voltage VCC and the output voltage of the photo detection IC is larger than the AFE voltage VCC. Therefore, the PMOS transistor is always turned on and has leakage problem. The pike  34  shown in  FIG. 5C  will cause error of S/H circuit in space signal region, especially in high speed operation.  
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0015]     It is the object of the present invention to provide a recording apparatus for optical data, which uses limiter circuit to attenuate a reference voltage to minimize the influence of writing power to servo signal.  
         [0016]     In one aspect of the present invention, the output signal level is limited by NMOS transistor or a diode.  
         [0017]     In another aspect of the present invention, a level shift circuit is provided after an RF_SUM adder to prevent DC offset problem due to a voltage divider. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS  
       [0018]      FIG. 1  shows a schematic diagram of recording apparatus for optical disk.  
         [0019]      FIG. 2  shows a schematic diagram of FE signal generator.  
         [0020]      FIG. 3  shows a prior art push-pull circuit for processing the optical signals.  
         [0021]      FIG. 4  shows a prior art recording circuit for optical disk.  
         [0022]      FIG. 5A  shows a writing signal produced by the recording circuit shown in  FIG. 4 .  
         [0023]      FIG. 5B  shows a reflection coefficient resulted from the writing signal.  
         [0024]      FIG. 5C  shows a detection result of the photo detection IC with respect to the writing signal shown in  FIG. 5A .  
         [0025]      FIG. 6  shows a prior art photo detection IC with sample/hold (S/H) circuit.  
         [0026]      FIGS. 7A and 7B  show switch circuit connected before the S/H circuit.  
         [0027]      FIG. 8A  shows the circuit diagram of limiter circuit according to the present invention.  
         [0028]      FIG. 8B  shows an operation curve of the limiter circuit according to the present invention.  
         [0029]      FIG. 9  shows a schematic diagram of internal circuit of the photo detection IC.  
         [0030]      FIG. 10  shows a photo detection IC with an attenuator circuit.  
         [0031]      FIG. 11  shows an adder circuit to sum the output signal of the photo detection IC.  
         [0032]      FIG. 12  shows a divider circuit is added before the adder circuit.  
         [0033]      FIG. 13  shows a circuit diagram for RF-SUM adder.  
         [0034]      FIG. 14  shows the reference voltage of the voltage divider being Vref.  
         [0035]      FIG. 15  shows a push-pull adder.  
         [0036]      FIG. 16  shows the block diagram of the recording apparatus for optical data according to the present invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS  
       [0037]      FIG. 8A  shows the circuit diagram of limiter circuit according to the present invention, which is a voltage divider composed of a plurality of resistors. The voltage divider can also be implemented by a resistor in series with a diode, or by an NMOS transistor.  FIG. 8A  shows the divider being implemented by a resistor in series with a diode.  FIG. 8B  shows an operation curve of the limiter circuit. The limiter circuit is used to attenuate the reference voltage to a voltage Vs, which can be determined by the intersection of resistor curve and characteristic curve of diode. The reference voltage Vs ensures the normal operation of S/H circuit.  
         [0038]     The limiter circuit can be applied to a specific voltage to the adder circuit of RF-SUM signal, for example, applied to attenuate the ground voltage. A voltage shift occurs for the adder circuit and a level shift circuit is needed. For subtract circuit, the voltage shift does not occur and a level shifter is not needed.  
         [0039]     More particularly, when a DC offset is present in one channel and in another channel, the DC offsets can be cancelled when the two channels are subjected to subtract operation. The voltage divider will perform attenuation operation according to a specific voltage and a level shift circuit is required when the specific voltage is not a reference voltage.  FIG. 9  shows a schematic diagram of internal circuit of the photo detection IC. The output voltage V 3  is reference voltage when there is no light and no induced current. When there is an induced current i by light, the output voltage V 3  is A+Vref (reference voltage), A=i×R. When there is an induced current −i by light, the output voltage V 3  is −A+Vref (reference voltage).  
         [0040]      FIG. 10  shows a photo detection IC with an attenuator circuit. The input signal e is not equal to the attenuation signal A. The input signal e is equal to nA+nVref+(1-n)V 1 , wherein V 1  is reference voltage for the voltage divider and n=R 1 /(R 1 +R 2 ). The voltage V 1  could be ground voltage or other voltage. Therefore, the attenuation signal becomes nA and the reference voltage becomes nVref+(1-n)V 1 . Therefore, the input signal e for S/H circuit will be modified to above expression. The voltage divider can be implemented by a plurality of resistors, a resistor in series with a diode, or by an NMOS transistor.  
         [0041]      FIG. 11  shows an adder circuit to sum the output signal of the photo detection IC. The input Va is the output Vref+A of the first photo detection IC, the input Vb is the output Vref+B of the second photo detection IC. The output V 4  is −K 1 (A+B)+Vref, wherein K 1 =R 4 /R 3 . In  FIG. 12 , an attenuation circuit and an S/H circuit are added before the adder circuit. The input signal Va′ becomes nA+nVref+(1-n) V 1 , wherein n=R 1 /(R 1 +R 2 )=R 5 /(R 5 +R 6 ). The input signal Vb′ becomes nB+nVref+(1-n) V 1 . The output signal V 5  becomes −nK 2 (A+B)+nVref+(1-n) V 1 , wherein K 2 =R 8 /R 7 . Even though K 2  is adjusted to nK 2 =K 1 , the output still has DC offset and a level shift circuit is required.  
         [0042]      FIG. 13  shows a circuit diagram for RF-SUM adder, wherein a level shift circuit is added after the adder to compensate the DC offset due to the attenuator. The output signal Vo is nK 2  (A+B)+Vref, wherein n=R 1 (R 1 +R 2 )=R 5 /(R 5 +R 6 ), K 2 =R 8 /R 7 . As shown in  FIG. 14 , if the reference voltage of the voltage divider is Vref, the level shift circuit can be neglected and the output of adder Vo=nK 2  (A+B)+Vref. However, the attenuation amount should be increased to ensure normal operation.  
         [0043]      FIG. 15  shows a push-pull adder and the DC offset thereof will be cancelled. Therefore, the output signal is Vo=nK 3 (B-A)+Vref.  
         [0044]      FIG. 16  shows the block diagram of the recording apparatus for optical data according to the present invention. The recording apparatus according to the present invention comprises an encoder  22  for producing digital signal for data, a laser diode  26 , an ALPC  24  connected to the encoder  22 , a write-signal processor  40  connected to the encoder  22  and the laser diode  26  to produce write signal. The write-signal processor  40  comprises a photo detection IC for producing a plurality of phase signals, a plurality of limiter circuits connected to the photo detection IC. The limiter circuit is voltage divider composed of a plurality of resistors. The limiter circuit can also be implemented as a resistor in series with a diode, or by an NMOS transistor.  
         [0045]     The write-signal processor  40  further comprises a plurality of S/H circuits connected to the photo detection IC, a channel signal generator connected to the photo detection IC and being an RF_SUM adder and a level shift circuit connected to an output of the channel signal generator. A controller circuit  28  is connected to the write-signal processor  40  to control a light beam for writing data to an optical disk  18 . The controller circuit  28  comprises an optical grating receiving an optical signal from the laser diode and generating a plurality of signal to the write-signal processor; a photo detection IC; and a semi-cylindrical lens connected to the optical grating and the optical pick-up head. The semi-cylindrical lens produces control signals along a vertical direction and a horizontal direction. The optical disk  18  can be write-once disk or re-write disk.