Concatenated Low-Density Parity-Check and BCH Coding System for Magnetic Recording Read Channel With 4 kB Sector Format

In this paper, we examine the potential of applying concatenated low-density parity-check (LDPC) and Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) coding for magnetic recording read channel with a 4 kB sector format. One key observation for such concatenated coding systems is that the overall error correction capability can be improved by exploiting the iteration-by-iteration bit error number oscillation behavior in case of inner LDPC code decoding failures. Moreover, assisted by field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based simulation platforms, empirical error-correcting performance analysis can reach a very low sector error rate (e.g., 10^-10 and below), which is almost infeasible for LDPC-only coding systems. Finally, concatenated coding can further reduce the silicon cost. By implementing a high-speed FPGA-based perpendicular recording read channel simulator, we investigate a 4 kB rate-15/16 concatenated coding system with a 512-byte rate-19/20 inner LDPC code and an outer 4 kB BCH code. We apply a decoding strategy that can fully utilize the bit error number oscillation behavior of inner LDPC code decoding, and show that its sector error rate drops down to 10^-11. For the purpose of comparison, we use the FPGA-based simulator to empirically observe the performance of 4 kB rate-15/16 LDPC and Reed-Solomon (RS) codes down to 10^-7-10^-8. Finally, we estimate the silicon cost of this concatenated coding system at 65 nm node, and compare it with that of the RS-only and LDPC-only coding systems.