Method and apparatus for reading and writing a multilevel signal from an optical disc oscillators

1. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium comprising:

reading an analog data signal using an optical detector;

preliminarily correcting for amplitude modulation in the analog data signal to obtain a preliminarily corrected analog data signal;

recovering a timing signal from the preliminarily corrected analog data signal; and

correcting for amplitude modulation of the analog data signal by processing the analog data signal and the timing signal.

2. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 1 , wherein correcting for amplitude modulation of the analog data signal includes evaluating a value of the analog data signal at times determined to correspond to gain control fields.

3. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 2 , wherein the times determined to correspond to gain control fields are determined using the recovered timing signal.

4. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 1 , wherein correcting for amplitude modulation of the analog data signal includes detecting an envelope of the analog data signal and normalizing the analog data signal.

5. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 1 , wherein processing the analog data signal includes performing anti-aliasing filtering.

6. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium comprising:

reading an analog data signal using an optical detector;

correcting for amplitude modulation of the analog data signal by processing the analog data signal to obtain an amplitude adjusted analog data signal;

recovering a timing signal from the amplitude adjusted analog data signal; and

using the timing signal to further correct for amplitude modulation in the amplitude adjusted analog data signal.

7. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 6 , wherein using the timing signal to further correct for amplitude modulation in the amplitude adjusted analog data signal further includes normalizing the adjusted analog data signal based on the strength of the signal read at a gain control field.

8. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 7 , wherein normalizing the adjusted analog data signal based on the strength of the signal read at a gain control field includes detecting the strength of the signal at a point near the center of the gain control field and wherein the center of the gain control field is found using the recovered timing signal.

9. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 6 , further comprising performing anti-aliasing filtering on the amplitude adjusted analog data signal.

10. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 9 , further comprising:

converting the filtered amplitude adjusted analog data signal to a digital signal in response to a clock signal; and

equalizing the digital signal using a finite impulse response (FIR) filter having two taps for each mark.

11. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium comprising:

reading an analog data signal using an optical detector;

correcting for amplitude modulation of the analog data signal by processing the analog data signal to obtain an amplitude adjusted analog data signal;

recovering a timing signal from the amplitude adjusted analog data signal;

converting the amplitude adjusted analog data signal to a digital data signal;

processing the digital data signal with a fractionally spaced equalizer to obtain an equalized data signal.

12. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 wherein the fractionally spaced equalizer is adaptive.

13. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 , wherein the fractionally spaced equalizer (i) has taps and (ii) trains on a training sequence to set the taps.

14. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 , further including processing the equalized data signal using a Viterbi detector to output a recovered data sequence.

15. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 14 , further including using the Viterbi detector to remove the effect of non data marks from the equalized data signal.

16. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 , wherein the equalized data signal is equalized to a target of 1+D.

17. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 , wherein the equalized data signal is equalized to remove the effects of intersymbol interference.

18. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 , further including decoding the recovered data sequence and detecting errors in the recovered data sequence.

19. A method of reading a multilevel signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 11 , further including:

processing the equalized data signal to obtain a recovered data sequence;

decoding the recovered data sequences; and

correcting errors in the recovered data sequence.

20. A method of reading a signal from an optical medium comprising:

reading an analog data signal using an optical detector, the analog data signal including an alignment sequence wherein the alignment sequence is chosen such that the autocorrelation of the alignment sequence has a substantially high value at a single alignment point;

converting the analog data signal to a digital data signal; and

cross correlating the digital data signal with a stored digital version of the alignment sequence; whereby the start of a data sequence can be determined.

21. A method of reading a signal from an optical medium as recited in claim 20 , wherein the signal is a multilevel signal.