Performance Evaluation of Four-Reader Array Detection for Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording

Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording (TDMR) is a promising technology to achieve magnetic recording areal density of 10 Tb/ in2. It suffers severe two-dimensional inter-symbol interference (2-D ISI). Reader array has many advantages in processing the signals from the 2-D ISI channel because it can acquire multiple signal streams including the inter-track interference (ITI) from the adjacent tracks simultaneously and process them jointly. We propose a novel detection architecture and the detection method corresponding to it, which uses a four-reader array to retrieve the recording data. The fourth reader can offer additional soft information of bits on the detected track and this information can be used to improve the detection reliability. Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms both the conventional single reader detection and three-reader array detection.