Novel Joint Detection and Decoding Schemes for TDMR Channels

Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) relies on advanced signal processing and coding techniques to enable storage of data at higher densities. Various detection and decoding schemes have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, a recently proposed joint detection and decoding scheme known as the joint Viterbi detector decoder (JVDD) is presented for TDMR channels. The JVDD operates on a trellis and attempts to find a sequence in the trellis that belongs to a legal codeword with minimum metric. It does so by using a metric thresholding and parity checking technique over the same trellis structure. The iterative detector/decoder consisting of a soft-output Viterbi algorithm detector and low-density parity check decoder is used as a performance benchmark for the JVDD. In this paper, we perform the comparison with various equalization/detection techniques consisting of: 1) a 1-D general partial response equalization scheme followed by a 1-D-detector as used in today's Partial Response Maximum Likelihood Detection (PRML) channels; 2) a 2-D equalization scheme that equalizes to a 1-D target [fully equalizing away the intertrack interference (ITI)], followed by a series of parallel 1-D-detectors to handle the intersymbol interference (ISI); and 3) a 2-D-equalization scheme followed by 2-D detector to combat both ITI and ISI.