CODING FOR MAGNETIC RECORDING

Modern communication theory has increased the efficiency and reliability of communication systems. Our aim in this research is to achieve analogous improvements for the storage and retrieval of digital data in magnetic recording systems. This can be achieved by increasing the linear density and/or by increasing the density of the tracks. All of this must be done without sacrificing the reliability of the retrieved data. The magnetic recording system can be viewed as a communication channel, here called the Magnetic Recording Channel (MRC). Redundancy introduced in the signal space can be used to improve the performance of the system as compared with an uncoded system. In this research three models of the MRC are considered. For these models, several techniques for utilizing modulation and coding for increasing the packing density for the magnetic recording system are introduced. Theoretical bounds on the achievable data rate for such models are derived using information theoretic principles