An Intertrack Interference (ITI) Subtraction Scheme for Bit-Patterned Media Recording

Abstract

Currently, hard disk drive has been struggled to overcome the super-paramagnetic limit that restricts the density increment. Bit-patterned magnetic recording (BPMR) is a candidate that can increase an areal density (AD) up to 4 Tb/in <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . However, inter-track interference (ITI) arising from a narrow track width at high AD severely degrades the system performance. This study proposes the ITI subtraction technique with turbo iteration in a coded BPMR system. This method refines the equalized sequence by subtracting the ITI using an imitated ITI sequence that is generated by the soft information obtained from turbo iteration and ITI coefficients. The refined sequence that contains the partial ITI is sent to the turbo iteration as many rounds as needed. Simulation results indicate that the proposed system outperforms the conventional system whether or not media noise is considered.