Patent ID: 8700976

Claim:
An apparatus for recovering an error-correction-encoded codeword from a set of input samples, the apparatus comprising: an error-correction decoder adapted to (i) perform error-correction decoding to attempt to recover the error-correction-encoded codeword and (ii) generate a first set of soft-output values, each soft-output value in the first set corresponding to a bit of the error-correction-encoded codeword; and a channel detector adapted to perform, if the error-correction decoder converges on a trapping set, channel detection to generate a second set of soft-output values for subsequent error-correction decoding, wherein: the second set of soft-output values is generated based on (i) the set of input samples and (ii) the first set of soft-output values; and each soft-output value in the second set corresponds to a bit of the error-correction-encoded codeword; and one or more adjusters adapted to adjust at least one set of (i) the first set of soft-output values before the channel detection and (ii) the second set of soft-output values before the subsequent error-correction decoding.