Abstract. We use a paraxial approximating solution to calculate the point spread function of the collinear holographic storage system and show that the point spread function can be dramatically enhanced by the reference pattern with random binary phase modulation or random phase modulation. 2-4 such as CDs and DVDs. In addition, uniform shift selectivity in both radial and tangential directions and a fairly large wavelength shift and tilt tolerance are observed.5 However, the point spread function ͑PSF͒ of the proposed CHS is too wide spreading and as a result the diffracted signal is blurred, so the storage capacity in one page is limited. This restriction was not removed until the radial line reference pattern was proposed 3 in 2005. One of the disadvantages of the radial line reference is that the energy is wasted due to the low transmitting ratio in area in the reference pattern. The dc peak with extremely high energy in the focal point also causes saturation of the material and decreases the quality of the hologram. Introducing defocus of the object lens is a way to blur the dc peak to avoid this overexposure effect. However, for a CHS system, the reference beam and the signal beam interfere only around the focal plane. Defocus will decrease the interference region inside the media and inevitably decrease the effective dynamic range of the medium. A different approach is to use random binary phase ͑RBP͒ mask or random phase ͑RP͒ mask to make the spatial spectrum wider and suppress the dc component in the Fourier plane.6,7 This method will not decrease the interference region inside the media and is more suitable for solving the problem of dc peak. In this paper, we calculate the PSF of the collinear holographic storage system when reference pattern are RBP modulation and RP modulation. The simulation results show that with proper arrangement both the RBP mask and the RP mask can achieve extremely sharp PSFs. Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the storage system for theoretical modeling. In the model, the mirror on the back surface of the holographic disk in the real system is replaced by a double-thickness disk in a modeled transmission algorithm to replace the reflection algorithm in the real system. In previous research, we showed that the PSF for the collinear system can be written 8 as PSF͑,͒ = exp͑jk4f͒ ͑f͒ 2