Target and Equalizer Design for High-Density Bit-Patterned Media Recording

In bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) channels, the inter-track interference (ITI) is extremely severe at ultra high areal densities, which significantly degrades the system performance. The partial-response maximum-likelihood (PRML) technique that uses an one-dimensional (1D) partial response target might not be able to cope with this severe ITI, especially in the presence of media noise and track mis-registration (TMR). This paper describes the target and equalizer design for highdensity BPMR channels. Specifically, we proposes a two-dimensional (2D) cross-track asymmetric target, based on a minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) approach, to combat media noise and TMR. Results indicate that the proposed 2D target performs better than the previously proposed 2D targets, especially when media noise and TMR is severe.