Upper Limits on Achievable Storage Density Using Turbo Equalization in 2-D Magnetic Recording

The maximum amounts of 2-D intersymbol interference that can be tolerated by the specific types of turbo equalizers are analyzed using the extrinsic information transfer charts. The results translate into the maximum normalized user density that each equalizer can support given an ample channel signal-to-noise ratio. It is shown that a low-complexity self-iterating equalizer based on individually weak linear component equalizers running in different directions provides excellent performance.