Properties and optimisation of a high density recording channel. I

Erasable magneto-optical recording yields higher storage densities but suffers too from a higher error rate compared to other sequential recording techniques. The principle of magneto-optical recording is explained, the recording medium and the opto-electric pick-up are considered as a transmission channel for digital signals, which is described by its amplitude-frequency characteristics and its noise sources. For a concrete example from the literature in which biphase-coding is used for channel coding an optimum receiving filter is calculated. Compared to receiving filters commonly used with biphase signals the expected error rates will improve by several orders of magnitude.