A Bit-Flipping Technique Based on 2D Modulation Constraint in BPMR Systems

Abstract

Inter-track interference (ITI) cancelation is one of the considerable challenges for high areal density (AD) magnetic recording such as in bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) systems. In literature, the two-dimensional (2D) modulation codes have been proposed to cancel the ITI effect [1, 2] which can efficiently improve the overall system performance, e.g., a rate-5/6 2D modulation code [2]. Although the rate-5/6 modulation code ensures that the readback signal of the center track will not be corrupted by severe ITI; however, both the upper and lower tracks can still be interfered by their sidetracks. To improve this shortcoming; therefore, we propose the bit-flipping technique that performs together with the rate5/6 2D modulation code. Here, the relationship between the data encoding condition and soft-information obtained from the soft output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) detector is utilized to be a criterion for flipping the ambiguous data bits. Simulation results indicate that the proposed system is better than the conventional coded system under with/without media noise and track mis-registration.