Iterative Decoding for High-Density Bit-Patterned Media Recording

Bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) is one of the promising techniques to be used to achieve the areal density beyond the super-paramagnetic limit. Nonetheless, the BPMR system is normally encountered both inter-symbol interference and inter-track interference, especially at high recording densities. This problem is regarded as one of the most challenging issues in the BPMR system. In this paper, we design a two-dimensional (2D) cross-track symmetric target and its corresponding equalizer to combat both interferences. Furthermore, we also utilize an iterative scheme, which iteratively exchanges soft information between a 2D SOVA detector and an LDPC decoder, to decode an input data sequence. Results indicate that the proposed method performs better than other methods, especially when the recording density is high. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.