Advanced signal processing for the Blu-ray Disc system

Advanced signal processing enables high capacities for the BD system. Measurements show that data detection with a conventional equalizer does not give sufficient system margins. Both a Viterbi decoder and the limit equalizer give a significant improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio and therefore sufficiently large margins. An adaptive equalizer is able to correct the distortions introduced by tangential tilt. The performance of the limit equalizer and a Viterbi decoder are comparable; only in the tangential tilt situation does a Viterbi decoder perform slightly better. For high data rates the limit equalizer may be preferred over the Viterbi decoder due to its simple hardware structure.