ECC-less LDPC coding for magnetic recording channels

This paper presents a system for magnetic recording channels, using low-density parity check (LDPC) codes and a novel method of erasure compensation that can correct thermal asperity (TA) and media defects (MDs). The system does not require error-correction codes (ECC) based on the Reed-Solomon codes, and thus is ECC-less. Simulation results show that the performance of ECC-less LDPC codes is better than that of the LDPC codes with ECC. It is also shown that LDPC codes of rate 0.814 can correct 48-byte TA and 24-byte MD, which are sufficient for practical hard disk drives.