RS Plus LDPC Codes for Perpendicular Magnetic Recording

In this paper, we investigate RS plus LDPC concatenated architectures for perpendicular magnetic recording channels. Using simulations, we find the optimal code rate and iterative scheme for the concatenated codes, compare their performance in both random noise and media defects, and show that those whose inner LDPC codes have lower column weights exhibit better performance. In addition, we estimate the performance of the concatenated codes with inner LDPC codes of column weight two, at very high signal-to-noise ratios, and find their error floors.