On soft iterative decoding for ternary recording systems with RLL constraints

In this paper, we investigate the soft iterative decoding technique for ternary recoding systems with run-length-limited (RLL) constraints. We employ a simple binary-to-ternary RLL encoder following the LDPC (low density parity check) encoder. In the decoder, the iteratively passing of soft information between the LDPC decoder and a detector is used, where the detector is constructed for a combination of the RLL encoder, PLM (pulse length modulation) precoder and the partial response channel. We provide two different decoding algorithms. For one of the decoding algorithm, we are able to obtain bit-error-rate performance which is inferior to the comparable system without considering the RLL constraint for the high sign-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime and is better for the low-to-moderate SNR regime.