85.9 Gb/in ^} Recording Areal Density on Barium Ferrite Tape

• Published in: IEEE transactions on magnetics Vol. 51; no. 4; pp. 1 - 7
• Main Authors: Furrer, Simeon, Lantz, Mark A., Engelen, Johan B. C., Pantazi, Angeliki, Rothuizen, Hugo E., Cideciyan, Roy D., Cherubini, Giovanni, Haeberle, Walter, Jelitto, Jens, Eleftheriou, Evangelos, Oyanagi, Masahito, Kurihashi, Yuichi, Ishioroshi, Takahiro, Kaneko, Tetsuya, Suzuki, Hiroyuki, Harasawa, Takeshi, Shimizu, Osamu, Ohtsu, Hiroki, Noguchi, Hitoshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.04.2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Coercive force; Iterative decoding; Magnetic heads; Magnetic recording; Magnetic tape; Magnetism; Media; Servomotors; Signal to noise ratio; signal detection; magnetic tape recording; tracking; Magnetic recording
• ISSN: 0018-9464; 1941-0069
• DOI: 10.1109/TMAG.2014.2355875

The recording performance of a new magnetic tape based on perpendicularly oriented barium ferrite particles was investigated using a 90-nm-wide giant-magnetoresistive reader and a prototype enhanced-field write head. A linear density of 600 kb/in with a postdetection byte-error rate <;3 × 10 -2 was demonstrated based on measured recording data and a software read channel that used a noise-predictive maximum likelihood detection scheme. Using a new iterative decoding architecture, a user bit-error rate of <;1 × 10 -20 can be achieved at this operating point. To facilitate aggressive scaling of the track density, we made several advances in the area of the track-following servo. First, we developed an experimental low-noise tape transport. Second, we implemented an optimized servo channel that together with an experimental timing-based servo pattern enables the generation of position estimates with nanoscale resolution at a high update rate. Third, we developed a field-programmable gate array-based prototyping platform in which we have implemented the servo channel and an H ∞ -based track-following controller, enabling real-time closed-loop track-following experiments. Combining these technologies, we achieved a position-error signal (PES) with a standard deviation of 10.3 nm. This magnitude of PES in combination with a 90-nm-wide reader allows the writing and reading of 177-nm-wide tracks at 600 kb/in, for an equivalent areal density of 85.9 Gb/in 2 . This paper clearly demonstrates the continued scaling potential of tape technologies based on low-cost particulate media.