Distance-Enhancing Constrained Codes with Parity-Check Constraints for Data Storage Channels

This paper proposes efficient distance-enhancing constrained codes with parity-check (PC) constraints for data storage channels. We first propose simple and efficient finitestate encoding methods to design various distance-enhancing constrained codes, including a repeated minimum transition runlength (RMTR) code for optical recording channels, as well as a maximum transition run (MTR) code for magnetic recording channels. We further propose a general and systematic code design methodology, which can efficiently combine constrained codes with PC codes. The constrained codes can be any distanceenhancing constrained codes. The PC codes can be any linear binary PC codes. The rates of the designed codes are only a few tenths of a percent below the theoretical maximum. The proposed method enables soft information to be available to the PC decoder and soft decoding of PC codes. Examples of several newly designed distance-enhancing constrained PC codes are illustrated. Simulation results with blu-ray disc (BD) systems show that the proposed new RMTR code and RMTR constrained 4-bit PC code perform 0.2 dB and 0.85 dB better than the standard 17PP code, respectively, at error correction code (ECC) failure rate (EFR) of 10
^-12
and high recording density.