Soft-Output Detector Using Multi-Layer Perceptron for Bit-Patterned Media Recording

As conventional data storage systems are faced with critical problems such as the superparamagnetic limit, bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) has received significant attention as a promising next-generation magnetic data storage system. However, the reduced spacing between islands at increased areal density causes severe intersymbol and intertrack interference, which degrade BPMR system performance. In this study, we introduce a soft-output detector using multi-layer perceptron to predict reliable information. A received signal is equalized and detected by the MLP detector. The MLP detector provides a well-estimated value by using the binary-cross entropy function as a loss function and the identity function as an activation function for the output layer of the MLP detector. This study investigates the received probability distributions out of the detectors and compares the performance of various versions against a conventional detector. Compared with the conventional detection, the proposed MLP detectors provide a small variance and better BER performance than the conventional detection. Simulations of MLP designs show an advantage over conventional detection. Moreover, the proposed MLP detectors with the demodulator exhibit better BER performance than the conventional detector with the demodulator.