Turbo coding is widely known as one of effective error control coding techniques in various digital communication systems since this coding method has proposed by C. Berrou, etc in 1993. In digital magnetic recording, it has been cleared that the error correcting capability of turbo coding is superior to most of conventional recording codes as a matter of course. But, the performance of a partial response maximum-likelihood (PRML) system combined with any recording code is degraded by many undesirable factors or effects. To improve the performance of the PRML system in high areal density recording, it is useful to adopt a higher order PRML system or high rate code in a general case. In this paper, the rate 32/34 turbo code combined with an enhanced extended class-4 partial response (E2PR4) is proposed. We call this trellis coded partial response (TCPR) system the rate 32/34 turbo-coded E2PR4 (32/34 TC-E2PR4). Our proposed TCPR system can be expected to get large coding gain and improve the performance of PRML system. As a result, the proposed coding system provides a good performance compared with the conventional systems. In especial, our system can achieve a BER of 10-5 with SNR of approximately 1.5 dB less than the conventional 8/9 maximum transition run (MTR) coded E2PR4ML system at a normalized linear density of 3.

Three basic ideas for enhancing the performance of extended EPRML (EEPRML) are described in detail. The first is the modification of the EEPRML impulse response in order to minimize the bit error rate of read signals from magnetic recording channels. This modification can improve the signal to noise ratio (S/N) of conventional extended partial response maximum likelihood (EPRML) by approximately 1 dB. The second is the introduction of 16/17 (3;11) maximum transition run code (MTR). This code can completely eliminate error events of more than four consecutive bits from modified EEPRML error events, and reduce the probability of minimum distance error events occurring by one eighth. Finally, dominant error events such as {0e0}, {0ee0}, {0eee0}, and {0e00e0} before 16/17 (3,11) MTR decoding can be corrected by employing cyclic redundancy check code (CRCC) with soft decision decoding. The symbol "e" represents one bit error, namely, "1" to "0" or vice versa and "0" represents a correct bit. Total performance has been evaluated by computer simulations using an isolated waveform similar to actual read signals and additive white Gaussian noise. Consequently, it has been confirmed that modified EEPRML with 16/17 (3;11) MTR code and CRCC can improve the S/N of conventional EPRML by approximately 4 dB at a bit error rate of 10-6.