Performance Evaluation of PRML for Staggered Bit-Patterned Media Recording

초록

Bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) is widely recognized as a promising storage technology for the future magnetic recording systems to extend the densities of up to 4 Tb/in2. For increasing a density of BPMR, the bit islands must be close to each other. Since the distance between bit islands becomes smaller, there will be more inter-symbol interference (ISI) in addition to inter-track interference that severely degrades the performance of BPMR system; in other words, we have faced the problem of two-dimensional (2-D) ISI. In BPMR, bit islands can be arranged on a regular array or packed in a staggered pattern. Since the effect of the ITI can be diminished by using staggered pattern, it can achieve better performance than that of using regular pattern. In this paper, we propose a 2-D soft output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) with horizontal and vertical 1-D SOVA for staggered pattern islands BPMR. Also, we investigate the performance of different partial response targets, comparing horizontal 1-D SOVA and 2-D SOVA.