Patent ID: 8576510
Filing Date: 2013-11-05
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
1. A tape drive system, comprising: a magnetic head having at least one servo sensor for sensing at least one defined servo track of a magnetic tape, wherein the servo sensor is configured to read a plurality of servo pulses from one or more servo bursts of the servo track while the magnetic tape is moving past the magnetic head, wherein the one or more servo bursts represent at least an encoded data symbol; an analog-to-digital converter configured to provide a sequence of samples of the readback servo signal; a digital correlator configured to compute a correlation signal between the sequence and a reference waveform; a timing reference module configured to provide a reference timing model comprising one or more interpolation instants to the digital correlator, wherein the correlation signal determined at each interpolation instant yields a detection metric for one data symbol; a correlation interpolator configured to interpolate the correlation signal at the interpolation instants and compute a longitudinal position (LPOS) detection metric according to the interpolated correlation signal samples; and an LPOS detector configured to decode the encoded data symbol of the one or more servo bursts using the computed LPOS detection metric and estimate a reliability of the decoded data symbol of the one or more servo bursts.