IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 53, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2017 8108905
Non-Binary Protograph-Based LDPC Codes for 2-D-ISI
Magnetic Recording Channels
Pingping Chen
1,2
,KuiCai
2
, Lingjun Kong
3
, Zaichun Chen
2
,andMuZhang
2
1
Fuzhou University, Fujian 350106, China
2
Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372
3
College of Telecommunication and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Nanjing 210023, China
2-D inter-symbol-interference (2-D-ISI), consisting of ISI in the down track direction and inter-track interference along the cross-
track direction, is a major factor that severely degrades the performance of ultra-high density magnetic recording systems. Due to its
superior performance and the protograph structure which facilitates high-speed encoding and decoding, the protograph codes have
shown a high potential to tackle 2-D-ISI. However, so far, no work has been reported on the design of non-binary protograph-based
low-density parity-check (NP-LDPC) codes for 2-D-ISI channels. In this paper, we first propose a modified protograph extrinsic
information transfer analysis. In conjunction with the asymptotic ensemble weight distribution analysis, they both serve as theoretical
tools to analyze the performance of NP-LDPC codes designed for the 2-D-ISI channels. By further applying a fast search approach, we
construct two types of NP-LDPC codes for 2-D-ISI channels. Both theoretical analyses and simulated results show that the proposed
codes outperform the existing binary LDPC codes that optimized for 2-D-ISI channels as well as the non-binary quasi-cyclic LDPC
code, at both low and high SNR regions.
Index Terms— 2-D inter-symbol-interference (2-D-ISI), extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) analysis, magnetic recording channels,
protograph low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes.
I. INTRODUCTION
T
HE conventional perpendicular magnetic recording sys-
tem is approaching its area density (AD) limit [1], the bit-
patterned magnetic recording (BPMR), heat (or microwave)
assisted magnetic recording, and shingled writing/2-D mag-
netic recording, which have been proposed in recent years
to extend the storage density beyond 1 Tb/in
2
[2]–[4].
Correspondingly, both the bit length and track pitch of the
magnetic storage media are reduced significantly, leading
to severe inter-symbol-interference (ISI) in the down track
direction, and inter-track interference (ITI) along the cross-
track direction. ISI and ITI together give rise to a 2-D-ISI
for ultra-high density magnetic recording systems. Advanced
channel coding and signal processing techniques play a critical
role to effectively mitigate the 2-D-ISI and enable a higher AD
for the magnetic recording systems [5]–[9].
Due to their superior capacity-approaching performance,
the low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have been widely
applied in the read channel of magnetic recording systems.
Many works have been done to investigate the binary LDPC
codes and their error floor performance in the 1-D-ISI mag-
netic recording channels, which are also modeled as the par-
tial response (PR) channels [10]–[12]. For ultra-high density
magnetic recording systems with 2-D-ISI, the binary irregular
LDPC codes have been optimized by using extrinsic informa-
tion transfer (EXIT) curve fitting [13]. Since non-binary LDPC
(NB-LDPC) codes are found to outperform their binary coun-
terparts for additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels,
Jeon and Kumar [14] investigated the performance of non-
Manuscript received March 6, 2017; accepted April 19, 2017. Date of
publication April 24, 2017; date of current version October 24, 2017.
Corresponding author: C. Kui (e-mail: cai_kui@sutd.edu.sg).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2017.2697075
binary quasi-cyclic (NQC) LDPC codes based on progressive-
edge-growth algorithm for the PR channels. On the other
hand, the protograph-based LDPC codes, constructed from
the small base matrices or protographs, have shown excellent
performance with simple hardware implementation for AWGN
channels and PR channels [10], [15]. Recently, several types
of binary protograph-based LDPC codes have been designed
for 2-D-ISI channels [16]–[18]. However, so far, no work has
been reported on the design of non-binary protograph-based
LDPC (NP-LDPC) codes for 2-D-ISI channels.
In this paper, we present novel NP-LDPC codes designed for
2-D-ISI magnetic recording channels, based on a modified pro-
tograph EXIT analysis, together with the asymptotic ensemble
weight distribution (AWE) analysis. By further applying a fast
search approach, we construct two types of NP-LDPC codes.
The EXIT-chart analysis, the AWE analysis, and the error rate
simulations have demonstrated the superior performance of the
proposed codes over the existing binary LDPC codes and the
NQC LDPC code for 2-D-ISI channels.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we intro-
duce the system model of a non-binary LDPC coded system
with 2-D-ISI. In Section III, we propose a modified protograph
EXIT analysis, together with the AWE analysis, for analyzing
the codes’ performance for 2-D-ISI channels. Two types of
NP-LDPC codes are constructed for 2-D-ISI magnetic record-
ing channels in Section IV, and their performances are evalu-
ated in Section V. Finally, Section VI concludes this paper.
II. S
YSTEM MODEL
In a magnetic recording channel with 2-D-ISI [5], each bit
suffers interferences from both the down-track and cross-track
directions. The channel response before equalization can be
represented by an L
M
× L
N
matrix H, with L
M
and L
N
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