Ultra high speed scanner for optical data handling

A compact disc (CD) drive rotates the CD whereas the laser head scans in a radial direction to access different locations on the CD. Accessing different locations of a storage device at a fast speed for data handling is limited due to the mechanical inertia associated with these systems. Very high speed optical scanning can be used for rapidly accessing these storage devices to handle data at exceedingly fast rates. We present novel high speed fiber-optic scanning systems far data handling in 2D and 3D data storage devices. The proposed architectures use wavelength tuning to produce fast scan spot beams.