An Iterative Two-Head Two-Track Detection Method for Staggered Bit-Patterned Magnetic Recording Systems

One of the major problems in bit-patterned magnetic recording (BPMR) systems is an inter-track interference (ITI) that can significantly degenerate the system performance, especially at high areal densities (ADs). Generally, the BPMR system with staggered islands experiences less ITI effect than that with regular islands. Therefore, we propose an iterative two-head two-track detection method for a staggered BPMR system to further reduce the ITI effect, which employs two read heads to read two adjacent tracks and decodes them simultaneously. To lessen the ITI, the weighted readback signal of one track, serving as an ITI signal, is subtracted from the readback signal of the other track, and vice versa, before passing the refined readback signal to an iterative decoding process. Hence, the decoded data will be utilized to estimate the ITI signal for the next global iteration, N
_G
. Supposing that the refined readback signal has only one-side ITI effect. We also present the design of the 2×3 target and its compatible equalizer that will be employed in the proposed system. Results demonstrate that the proposed system not only is superior to the conventional system but also has low complexity. Specifically, the proposed system can perform close to the conventional system whose readback signal encounters only one-side ITI effect when N
_G
= 2, 3 and 5 iterations for AD = 2, 2.5, and 3 Tb/in
²
, respectively.