Effect of media property variations on shingled magnetic recording channel bit error rate and signal to noise ratio performance

Abstract

Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) is an upcoming technology to see the hard disk drive industry over until heat assisted magnetic recording or another technology matures. In this work, we study the impact of variations in media parameters on the raw channel bit error rate (BER) through micromagnetic simulations and the grain flipping probability channel model in the SMR situation. This study aims to provide feedback to media designers on how media property variations influence the SMR channel performance. In particular, we analyse the effect of variations in the anisotropy constant (Ku), saturation magnetization (Ms), easy axis (ez), grain size (gs), and exchange coupling (Ax), on the written micromagnetic output and the ensuing hysteresis loop. We also compare these analyses with the channel performance on signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the raw channel BER.