|Publication number||US6259668 B1|
|Application number||US 09/467,385|
|Publication date||10 Jul 2001|
|Filing date||21 Dec 1999|
|Priority date||14 Feb 1996|
|Also published as||US6882614, US8503272, US8848502, US20010005352, US20030002402, US20030193877|
|Publication number||09467385, 467385, US 6259668 B1, US 6259668B1, US-B1-6259668, US6259668 B1, US6259668B1|
|Inventors||Chul-woo Lee, Jang-hoon Yoo|
|Original Assignee||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (26), Referenced by (14), Classifications (14), Legal Events (4)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This is a continuation-in-part application of U.S. Ser. No. 09/291,031, filed on Apr. 14, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,147,955, issued Nov. 14, 2000; which is a continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 08/933,249, filed Sep. 18, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,909,424, issued Jun. 1, 1999; which is a continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 08/779,521, filed Jan. 7, 1997, now abandoned.
This application claims the benefit of Korean Application No. 96-3603, filed Feb. 14, 1996, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus having an optical pickup device, and more particularly, to a recording/reproducing device having an optical pickup device which enables reading out of information from optical disks having different thicknesses and enables recording information thereon.
In the optical pickup of the recording/reproducing device, an objective lens faces a recording surface of an optical disk for focusing light to record information onto the recording surface of the disk or receiving light reflected from the surface of the disk to read information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, research on an optical drive has been conducted in which the drive can seat disks having different thicknesses by adopting a lens device including both a hologram lens and a refractive lens.
FIGS. 1 and 2 show focusing states of a conventional optical pickup device of light incident by zero order diffracted light and 1st order diffracted light on a thin disk and a thick disk, respectively. A refractive lens 2 and a hologram lens 1 are disposed in sequence along an optical path from each of disks 3 a and 3 b. The hologram lens 1 has a lattice pattern 11 for diffracting light that passes through the hologram lens 1. Thus, while light 4 emitted from a light source (not shown) passes through the hologram lens 1, light is divided into a diffracted 1st order light 41 and a non-diffracted zero order light 40, respectively. While the diffracted 1st order light 41 and the non diffracted zero order light 40 pass through each of the objective lenses 2, the light 41 and 40 are focused with different intensities, thereby forming a focus on the thin disk 3 a and on the thick disk 3 b.
The lens device described above can record information on disks having different thicknesses and read out information therefrom using zero order light and 1st order light. However, as the incident light is divided into zero order light and 1st order light, the efficiency of light use is lowered. That is, since the incident light is divided into zero order light and 1st order light by the hologram lens 1, the actual amount of light used for recording information is only 15%. Also, when information is reproduced, information is included in only one of zero order light and 1st order light. Thus, 1st order light or zero order light without information is detected by a photo detector and the detected light may produce noise. The above problem can be overcome by processing the hologram lens of the lens device. However, this requires a high precision process of etching a fine pattern on the hologram, thereby increasing the manufacturing cost.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an optical pickup device wherein parts thereof can be manufactured and assembled easily at low cost.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a recording and/or reproducing apparatus which has high efficiency of light use and low spherical aberration.
To achieve the above and other objects, there is provided a recording and/or reproducing apparatus comprising an optical pickup device and a processing unit, wherein the optical pickup device comprises a light source; an objective lens facing a disk having a light passing region divided into central, intermediate and periphery regions respectively corresponding to a near axis area, an intermediate axis area and a far axis area of incident light, wherein the curvature of the central and peripheral regions are optimized for a thin disk and that of the intermediate region is optimized for a thick disk; a photo detector for detecting light reflected from the disk; a beam splitter, disposed between the objective lens and the light source, for transmitting/reflecting light from the light source toward the objective lens and for reflecting/transmitting light reflected from the disks toward the photo detector; and the processing unit processes an information signal to control the incident light generated by the light source, and processes the detected light from the photodetector.
The above and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent by describing in detail a preferred embodiment thereof with reference to the attached drawings in which:
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a conventional lens device having a hologram lens focusing on a thin disk;
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the lens device of FIG. 1 focusing on a thick disk;
FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of an optical pickup device according to the present invention;
FIGS. 4 and 5 are perspective and front views of an objective lens adopted into the optical pickup device according to the present invention;
FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an optical path through the objective lens of the optical pickup device according to the present invention;
FIG. 7 is a magnified view of portion A in FIG. 6;
FIG. 8 is a block diagram of a recording/reproducing apparatus for implementing the present invention.
According to an optical pickup device of the present invention, to prevent the generation of spherical aberration from light of an intermediate area when information is reproduced from a thick disk, such that the intermediate area is located between a near axis area and a far axis area relative to a central optical axis, the curvature of an intermediate region corresponding to the intermediate area of the light is optimized with respect to the thick disk. Also, the light receiving area of a photo detector is limited so that light of the far axis area cannot be reached thereto when information is reproduced from the thick disk. Here, the near axis area represents an area around a central axis of the lens with negligible aberration. Also, the far axis area represents an area relatively far from the optical axis compared with that of the near axis area, and the intermediate area represents an area between the near and far axis areas.
FIG. 8 is a block diagram of a recording/reproducing apparatus for implementing the present invention. The function of the recording/reproducing apparatus for recording/reproducing A/V (audio/video) data using a recordable and rewriteable disk is largely divided into recording and reproduction.
During recording, an AV codec 110 compression-codes an externally applied AV signal according to a predetermined compression scheme and supplies size information for the compressed data. A digital signal processor (DSP) 120 receives the compressed A/V data supplied from the AV codec 110, adds additional data for error correction code (ECC) processing thereto, and performs modulation using a predetermined modulation scheme. A radio frequency amplifier (RF AMP) 130 converts the modulated data from the DSP 120 into a radio frequency (RF) signal. Then, a pickup 140 records the RF signal supplied from the RF AMP 130 on a disk mounted on a turn table of the pickup 140. A servo 150 receives information necessary for servo control from a system controller 160 and stably performs a servo function for the mounted disk.
During playback of information data stored on the disk, the pickup 140 picks up the optical signal from the disk having the information data stored therein, and the information data is extracted from the optical signal. The RF AMP 130 converts the optical signal into an RF signal, and extracts the servo signal for performing a servo function, and modulated data. The DSP 120 demodulates the modulated data supplied from the RF AMP 130 corresponding to the modulation scheme used during modulation, performs an ECC process to correct errors, and eliminates added data. The servo unit 150 receives information necessary for servo control from the RF AMP 130 and the system controller 160, and stably performs the servo function. The AV codec 110 decodes the compressed A/V data supplied from the DSP 120 to output an A/V signal. The system controller 160 controls the overall system for reproducing and recording the information data from and on the disk mounted on the turn table of the pickup 140.
FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of an optical pickup device used in the pickup 140 according to the present invention. Like a general optical pickup device, an objective lens 20, a beam splitter (separation unit) 60 and a detecting lens 40 are disposed in sequence on an optical path between a disk 30 and a photo detector 90, and a light source 80 is located on another optical path from the beam splitter 60. The disk 30 may either be a thin (digital video) disk 30 a or a thick (compact) disk 30 b.
In the optical pickup device having the above structure according to the present invention, FIGS. 4 and 5 show perspective and front views of the objective lens 20, respectively. The reference symbol WDD denotes the distance between the objective lens and the thin disk 30 a, and WDc denotes the distance between the objective lens and the thick disk 30 b. That is, in a reading or writing operation, the working distance for the thin disk 30 a is larger than that for the thick disk 30 b.
The objective lens 20 has a doughnut- or ring-shaped intermediate region A2 on at least one side, having an outer diameter which is less than the total significant light passing area diameter. Also, a central region A1 and a periphery region A3 are placed inside and outside of the intermediate region A2, respectively. Here, the curvatures of the central and peripheral regions A1 and A3 are optimized for a thin digital video disk (DVD), and that of the intermediate region A2 is optimized for a thick compact disk (CD). Also, depending on circumstances, the intermediate region A2 may be divided into a plurality of subregions. Preferably, the photo detector 90 is designed for only receiving light passed through the central and intermediate regions A1 and A2 of the objective lens 20 when information is reproduced from the thick disk, in which light of the far axis area is not detected by the photo detector 90. The central region A1 is a circular region, the intermediate region A2 is a first disk-shaped region and the periphery region A3 is a second disk-shaped region.
Thus, as shown in FIGS. 6 and 7, when information is reproduced from the thick CD 30 b, only light inside the dashed line is focused on the thick CD 30 b. Here, since light of the near axis area passes through the objective lens, less spherical aberration is generated, even though the curvature of the central region A1 corresponding to the near axis area is optimized for the thin DVD 30 a. Also, when reproducing information from the thin DVD 30 a, light passes through the central and peripheral regions A1 and A3 whose curvature is optimized for the thin DVD 30 a, thereby forming a focus on a surface including information of the thin DVD 30 a.
When a numerical aperture (NA) of the regions corresponding to the near and intermediate axis areas is less than 0.4, a small focus can be formed on the thick CD 30 b, wherein the small focus is optimized for the CD disk. According to experimentation, it is preferable that the width of the ring-shaped intermediate region is greater than 50 μm from the thin DVD 30 a for a stable reproducing characteristic. Also, the data of the objective lens 20 for each region which is optimized for the CD and DVD are summarized in Tables 1 and 2, respectively.
Table 1 shows lens data at the intermediate region A2 which is optimized for the thick CD 30 b, and Table 2 shows lens data at the central and periphery regions A1 and A3 optimized for a thin DVD 30 a. In these tables, the references to “front,” “back,” and “disk” represent the front surface of the objective lens 20, the back surface of the objective lens 20 and the surface of the disk, respectively. That is, in Table 1, the data for the curved surfaces “front,” “back,” and “disk” refer to the data of the front surface of the objective 20 lens at the intermediate region A2, the back surface of the lens at the intermediate region A2, and the surface of the thick CD 30 b, respectively, and in Table 2, the data for the curved surfaces “front,” “back,” and “disk” refer to the data of the front surface of the objective lens 20 at the central and periphery regions A1 and A3, the back surface of the lens at the central and periphery regions, and the surface of the thin DVD 30 a, respectively.
As described above, according to the optical pickup device of the present invention, the thick CD and the thin DVD can be compatibly adopted and a signal can be detected without picking up noise regardless of the thickness of the disk. Also, the objective lens can be manufactured easily by a general compression or injection molding, thereby reducing manufacturing costs.
Data at the intermediate region of the objective lens
K = 0.00000
A = −3.51258E-03
B = −6.19938E-04
C = −2.32191E-04
D = 0.00000
K = −24.72000
A = 4.46350B-03
B = −3.69750E-03
C = 8.23880E-04
D = −7.45950E-05
Data at the intermediate region of the objective lens
K = 0.00000
A = −3.51258E-03
B = −6.19938E-04
C = −2.32191E-04
D = 0.00000
K = −24.72000
A = 4.46350B-03
B = −3.69750E-03
C = 8.23880E-04
D = −7.45950E-05
|Cited Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US5132843 *||9 Mar 1990||21 Jul 1992||Omron Corporation||Grating lens and focusing grating coupler|
|US5708641||30 Aug 1996||13 Jan 1998||Daewoo Electronics Co. Ltd.||Multiple focus optical pickup system|
|US5708643||25 Sep 1996||13 Jan 1998||Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd.||Multiple focus optical pickup system for alternatively reading a multiple number of optical disks|
|US5729510||19 Jan 1995||17 Mar 1998||Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba||Optical head used for recording on optical recording medium having various thicknesses, warpage and the like|
|US5734512 *||26 Dec 1995||31 Mar 1998||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Dual-focus objective lens of optical pickup|
|US5745304||27 Nov 1996||28 Apr 1998||Daewoo Electronics, Co., Ltd.||Integrated optical pickup system capable of reading optical disks of different thickness|
|US5777973||6 Dec 1996||7 Jul 1998||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Reproducing and recording optical pickup compatible with discs having different thicknesses|
|US5787062||17 Oct 1996||28 Jul 1998||Sony Corporation||Disc-thickness-and-warp detecting apparatus|
|US5809000||30 May 1997||15 Sep 1998||Daewoo Electronics, Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup system for reading optical disks of different thicknesses|
|US5831953||21 Nov 1996||3 Nov 1998||Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha||Optical disk device using an optical pickup as a read mechanism for detecting a thickness of the substrate of an optical disk|
|US5844879||31 Mar 1997||1 Dec 1998||Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha||Optical head including ring-shaped light blocking or light non-converging portion|
|US5856965||7 May 1996||5 Jan 1999||Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.||Optical disc readout apparatus for different types of optical discs|
|US5867468||10 Mar 1997||2 Feb 1999||Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup with a vertically movable aperture means|
|US5870369||13 Feb 1997||9 Feb 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Objective lens device including an objective lens and a transparent member having two light control portions and optical pickup using the objective lens device|
|US5870371||23 Sep 1997||9 Feb 1999||Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd||Optical pickup device which can be adapted to plurality of types of optical disks|
|US5883874||22 Jul 1997||16 Mar 1999||Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup system for selectively reading a multiple number of optical disks|
|US5903536||14 Feb 1997||11 May 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Objective lens device, optical pickup adopting the same and method for manufacturing an objective lens|
|US5907530||6 Sep 1996||25 May 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup device|
|US5909424||18 Sep 1997||1 Jun 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup device and method to read from and record information to disks of different thicknesses|
|US5930214 *||10 Mar 1995||27 Jul 1999||Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba||Recording/reproducing optical head apparatus compatible with different optical media|
|US5933402||15 May 1997||3 Aug 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup capable of compatibly adopting disks of different thickness|
|US5966357||27 Jun 1997||12 Oct 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Disk discrimination method for digital versatile disk system|
|EP0921521A2||23 Nov 1998||9 Jun 1999||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Optical pickup using objective lens compatible with a plurality of optical disks|
|GB2315911A||Title not available|
|JPH09184975A *||Title not available|
|WO1997008691A1||28 Aug 1996||6 Mar 1997||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Lens device and an optical pickup apparatus using the lens device|
|Citing Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US6449235 *||2 Apr 1999||10 Sep 2002||Lg Electronics, Inc.||Optical pick-up apparatus and optical recording/reproducing apparatus using the same|
|US6856587||29 Jul 2002||15 Feb 2005||Lg Electronics Inc.||Optical pickup and optical recording/reproducing apparatus using the same|
|US7102980 *||25 Oct 2001||5 Sep 2006||Konica Corporation||Optical pickup apparatus and objective lens|
|US7116627 *||6 Jul 2001||3 Oct 2006||Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.||Compatible optical pickup device using a single light source|
|US7197002||5 Nov 2004||27 Mar 2007||Lg Electronics Inc.||Optical pickup and optical recording/reproducing apparatus using the same|
|US7224662||7 May 2003||29 May 2007||Pentax Corporation||Objective lens for optical pickup|
|US7333416||16 Feb 2006||19 Feb 2008||Konica Corporation||Optical pickup apparatus for recording or reproducing information for an optical information recording medium and objective lens for optical pickup apparatus|
|US7639589||29 Dec 2009||Konica Corporation||Optical pickup apparatus for recording or reproducing information for an optical information recording medium and objective lens for optical pickup apparatus|
|US20020159377 *||25 Oct 2001||31 Oct 2002||Konica Corporation||Optical pickup apparatus and objective lens|
|US20030210639 *||7 May 2003||13 Nov 2003||Pentax Corporation||Objective lens for optical pickup|
|US20040090900 *||6 Jul 2001||13 May 2004||Yoo Jang-Hoon||Compatible optical pickup device using a single light source|
|US20050063280 *||5 Nov 2004||24 Mar 2005||Lg Electronics, Inc.||Optical pickup and optical recording/reproducing apparatus using the same|
|US20060140103 *||16 Feb 2006||29 Jun 2006||Konica Corporation||Optical pickup apparatus and objective lens|
|CN1310232C *||21 Jan 2005||11 Apr 2007||日本电产三协株式会社||Optical head device|
|U.S. Classification||369/112.26, G9B/7.102, G9B/7.12, 369/44.23|
|International Classification||G11B7/135, G11B7/00|
|Cooperative Classification||G11B7/1374, G11B2007/0006, G11B7/13922, G11B2007/13727, G11B7/1353|
|European Classification||G11B7/1374, G11B7/1392C, G11B7/1353|
|12 Apr 2000||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., KOREA, REPUBLIC OF
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:LEE, CHUL-WOO;YOO, JANG-HOON;REEL/FRAME:010738/0853
Effective date: 20000321
|21 Dec 2004||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|24 Dec 2008||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8
|26 Dec 2012||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 12