Signal Processing for Hard Disk Drive (DT315)

SynopsisThis is a course of continuing education for working engineers in technical fields related to hard disk drives (HDDs). It covers the underlying principles and the theoretical foundation for signal processing in HDD. It also reviews the essential signal processing techniques used for the read/write channels. Various signal processing codes and detection schemes specifically used in HDD will be presented.

This course aims to equip the participants with a solid understanding of the working principles of write and read back processes. Upon completion of this course the participants should also have a very good appreciation of the challenges in signal processing for a data storage system.

What You Will Learn

• Fundamental concepts of read/write channel
• Communication and information theory of magnetic recording channel
• Modelling of recording channel
• Basic coding schemes
• Signal processing for read channel
• Iterative decoding

Who Should Attend

• Read/write channel engineers
• Channel front end engineers
• HDD system designers
• Product engineers

PrerequisiteTechnical background or working experience in electronics, mechatronics or communication engineering disciplines. Although the participants are not required to have in-depth knowledge in this field, some prior acquaintance with signals and systems should be helpful.

Course MethodologyThis course is conducted in a seminar room. Each participant will receive a set of course materials and a CD.

Course Duration3 days, 9am - 5pm

Course StructureDay 1

• A Brief History of Magnetic Storage
• Longitudinal and Perpendicular Recording
• Recording Physics and Organization of Data on a Disk
• Modelling the Recording Channel
• Read/Write Channel Implementation
• Signal and Noise Generation for Magnetic Recording Channel Simulations
• An Overview of Hard Drive Controller Functionality
• Read Channels for Hard Drives

• Partial Response Equalization
• Adaptive Timing Recovery for Partial Response Channels
• Interpolated Timing Recovery
• Adaptive Equalization Architectures for Partial Response Channels
• Detection Methods for Data-dependent Noise in Storage Channels
• Runlength Limited Sequences
• Maximum Transition Run Coding
• An Introduction to Error-Correcting Codes

• Coding and Detection for Multitrack Systems
• Two-Dimensional Data Detection and Error Control
• Introduction to Constrained Binary Codes with Error Correction Capability
• Constrained Coding and Error-Control Coding
• Convolutional Codes for Partial-Response Channels
• Turbo Codes
• An Introduction to LDPC Codes
• Servo Signal Processing