Timing recovery for sampling detectors in digital magnetic recording

The emerging synchronous detectors in digital recording systems require precise sampling of the readback waveform. In this paper, a general minimum-mean-square-error timing recovery approach is presented which could be applied to both partial response and decision feedback systems. We also investigate a related class of timing recovery algorithms which utilize the characteristics of the channel impulse response. A performance comparison of the two approaches on a set of experimental data, equalized to a class IV partial response target, is also presented