Iterative Signal Detection Scheme Using Multilayer Perceptron for a Bit-Patterned Media Recording System

Because of the physical and engineering problems of conventional magnetic data storage systems, bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) is expected to be a promising technology for extending the storage density to beyond 1 Tb /in(2). To increase the storage density in BPMR systems, the separation between islands in both down- and cross-track directions must be reduced; this reduction results in two-dimensional interference from neighboring symbols in those directions, which is a major performance degradation factor in BPMR. Herein, we propose an iterative signal detection scheme between a Viterbi detector and a multilayer perceptron to improve the performance of a BPMR system. In the proposed signal detection scheme, we use the modified output of a multilayer perceptron as a priori information to improve equalization and extrinsic information to decrease the effect of intertrack interference.