In this paper, we consider iterative detection and decoding (i.e., turbo equalization) for nonbinary low-density parity-check (LDPC) coded partial-response channels, where a quantizer is present to discretize the continuous received signal. We propose a turbo equalizer that uses the pre-computed quantized channel transition probabilities in the symbol-level BCJR channel detection algorithm, which significantly reduces the computational complexity by avoiding real-time floating-point multiplications. The proposed approach is further extended to nonbinary LDPC coded bit-patterned media recording (BPMR) channels. Simulation results show that with a small number of quantization bits, the proposed receiver approaches closely the performance of the conventional turbo equalizer operating on unquantized signals.
Joint timing recovery and turbo equalization for partial response channels
