Two-track joint detection for two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR)

The use of array readers (i.e., multiple read elements positioned to read stored data on multiple adjacent tracks) is one of the recent concepts to improve the areal density of magnetic recording systems. Array readers provide diversity gain to deal with noise and enable the handling of inter-track interference (ITI) as well as multi-track detection. In this paper, an array-reader two-track (AR2T) detection system is studied. We present the design of 2-D equalizer that jointly processes array readback signal streams over two tracks. Such a 2-D equalizer can be designed to approximate a 1-D or a 2-D partial-response (PR) target. It is shown that 2-D PR target can result in less residual ITI. For the detection of signals corresponding to 2-D PR target, we propose a novel symbol-based detection algorithm that processes two input signal streams jointly. We also implement a pattern-dependent noise-predictive (PDNP) version of proposed detector. Simulation results show that more than 4 dB performance gain can be achieved by the AR2T detection system compared to the traditional single-reader single-track detection system under aggressive track density conditions.