Combining Ecc With Modulation: Performance Comparisons

A technique for combining ECC with modulation codes of block type is described. Its performance is analyzed with respect to the traditional method in magnetic recording, which involves the concatenation of an error-correcting code with a convolutional modulation code. Conditions are established under which the new method is superior to the concatenated scheme. in particular, we analyze the performance with respect to the (1,7) and (2,7) modulation constraints. The new construction performs better in a noisy channel dominated by random errors. Cases in which the constraint k are relaxed is briefly studied. © 1991 IEEE.