INVESTIGATIONS OF APPLICABILITY OF MAGNETOOPTICAL MEDIA FOR ERASABLE DIGITAL OPTICAL-DATA MEMORIES

Magnetooptical media are characterized by the C/N ratio, variations in sensitivity, error distributions and error types. It is shown that with ideal conditions (substrate without birefringence, optical system without phaseshift effects), C/N ratios up to at least 60 dB should be possible. The ratios realized in practice so far are 50 dB to 55dB. Using currently available magnetooptical media, total storage capacities of up to 450 M Byte per surface can be realized on a 5 one quarter double prime disk with data rates up to 10 Mbit/s.