Signal-Processing Schemes for Multi-Track Recording and Simultaneous Detection Using High Areal Density Bit-Patterned Media Magnetic Recording

Recent magnetic recording technologies have opened the possibility of reaching densities of 10 Tb/in². A 2-D magnetic recording (TDMR) scheme has pointed out one of the key technologies for increasing areal density. From the viewpoint of signal processing for TDMR, a recording system is desirable or preferable to be capable of allowing to get readback signals from a group of adjacent parallel tracks and detect recorded data written in these tracks simultaneously. This paper proposes a novel signal processing scheme with coding and detection for bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) which is considered to be TDMR using bit-patterned media. Actually, the proposed signal processing scheme for BPMR gets mixed readback signal sequences from the parallel tracks using a single reading head and these readback signal sequences are equalized to a frequency response given by a desired 2-D generalized partial response system. In decoding process, a single maximum likelihood sequence detector is capable of detecting the equalized signal sequence, and it leads to an increase in the effective transfer rate because the recorded data on the parallel tracks are decoded for each time slot.