Iterative Detection and Decoding for TDMR With 2-D Intersymbol Interference Using the Four-Rectangular-Grain Model

This paper considers detection and error control coding for the 2-D magnetic recording (TDMR) channel modeled with the 2-D four-rectangular-grain model (FRGM). This simple model captures the effects of different 2-D grain sizes and shapes, as well as the TDMR grain overwrite effect. We construct a row-by-row Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv-based detector that processes two rows at a time. Simulation results using the same coded bit density and channel code as a previous paper on FRGM detection show gains in user bits per grain of up to 13.4% when the detector and the decoder iteratively exchange soft information, resulting in densities higher than 0.5 user bits per grain under all scenarios simulated. When the proposed detector/decoder operates on coded bits read from a random Voronoi grain model, the achieved density drops to 0.25 user bits per grain due to model mismatch between the detector and the data. Finally, this paper considers an iterative detection and decoding scheme combining TDMR detection, 2-D-intersymbol interference (ISI) detection, and soft-in/soft-out channel decoding in a structure with two iteration loops. Simulation results for the concatenated FRGM and $2 \times 2$ averaging mask ISI channel with 10 dB signal-to-noise ratio show that densities of 0.496 user bits per grain and above can be achieved over the entire range of FRGM grain probabilities.