Coding and Detection for Channels With Written-In Errors and Inter-Symbol Interference

Written-in errors (WIEs), which include written-in substitutions, insertions, and deletions, as well as 2-D inter-symbol interference (2-D-ISI), form one of the major challenges for the new emerging bit-patterned media recording technology. Coding and detection scheme with performance/complexity tradeoffs is expected to address such a challenge. In this paper, a new channel model with WIEs and ISI (WIE-ISI) is presented, and the embedded marker code scheme (EMCS) with Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) detector is employed to perform channel detection. By investigating the effect of ISI on the WIE-ISI channel considering BCJR detector, a virtual written-in substitution probability is introduced and a new synchronization algorithm with written-in substitution detection (SA-WSD) is developed. The EMCS employing the proposed SA-WSD demonstrates better error correction performance than that of the original SA. Furthermore, the SA-WSD is found to be robust to small estimation errors in the written-in substitution probability.