Application of soft-decision Reed-Solomon decoding to magnetic recording channels

We report on the application of algebraic soft-decision decoding of Reed-Solomon codes to magnetic recording channels. We present efficient algorithm implementations of the Koetter-Vardy algorithm and introduce a soft version of the Chase algorithm, which expands the decoding list without substantial increase in complexity. Our evaluation of these algorithms, based on realistic simulations on magnetic recording channels, shows that improved performance can be achieved with a small increase in hardware complexity.