US Patent 7911890 Optical disk unit

An optical disc drive includes: an optical branching element for splitting light from a light source into main and sub-beams; a condenser element for condensing the main and sub-beams; a photodetector section including photodetectors to receive reflected portions of the main and sub-beams, each photodetector having photosensitive areas, each of which outputs a signal representing the intensity of light received there; and a computing section for generating a first focus signal, representing where the focal point of the main beam is located with respect to the storage layer, based on the reflected light of the main beam, and a second focus signal based on the reflected light of the main and sub-beams.