Iterative Decoding for High-Density Bit-Patterned Media Recording

Bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) is one of the promising techniques to be used to achieve the areal density beyond the super-paramagnetic limit. Nonetheless, the BPMR system is normally encountered both inter-symbol interference and inter-track interference, especially at high recording densities. This problem is regarded as one of the most challenging issues in the BPMR system. In this paper, we design a two-dimensional (2D) cross-track symmetric target and its corresponding equalizer to combat both interferences. Furthermore, we also utilize an iterative scheme, which iteratively exchanges soft information between a 2D SOVA detector and an LDPC decoder, to decode an input data sequence. Results indicate that the proposed method performs better than other methods, especially when the recording density is high.