Performance Evaluation of Iterative Channel Codes for Digital Data Storage on Microfilm

In the past few years microfilm has gained new research interest as a medium for long-term storage of digital data. This became particularly possible by recent advances in laser film recording technology. In contrast to other optical or magnetic storage media, the microfilm digital channel (MDC) still has been subject to characterization in only a few publications. In this paper we investigate iterative channel codes for the MDC, in particular low-density parity-check and turbo convolutional codes. Simulation results show that practically error-free storage can be achieved with code rates even above 0.85 on a monochrome MDC with binary amplitude-shift keying modulation.