Array codes for erasure correction in magnetic recording channels

A type of quasi-cyclic binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes based on array codes, which have low encoding complexity and good performance, are considered for use in magnetic recording channels. Their error correction capability, for both electronic and media noise, and more importantly, for erasures, is investigated using simulations. Compared with random binary and q-ary LDPC codes, these codes offer a good tradeoff between performance and complexity.