Combined concatenated coding and nonlinear equalization for magnetic recording channels

Summary form only given. Following the work done by Ryan (Proc. ICC Int. Conf. on Communications, 1998), considerable research has been reported on the application of concatenated codes to partial response (PR) channels. Both parallel concatenated codes (PCC) and serial concatenated codes (SCC) have been studied. In all of those works, a linear model for the channel was assumed, which is a valid assumption for low recording densities. However, as the recording density increases, the channel becomes nonlinear where nonlinearity arises from closely spaced recorded transitions. In this paper, we combine concatenated coding and nonlinear equalization for PR channels that suffer from nonlinear distortion (or intersymbol interference) according to the setup shown in Fig 1. We extend the RAM-search/Viterbi-detector concept to the a posteriori probability (APP) and soft-output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) detectors that are used with turbo-coded partial response channels. The modified APP and SOVA are called RS-APP and RS-SOVA, respectively.