Patent ID: 7415651

Claim:
A data communication system, comprising: a channel detector configured to receive a set of at-least-three-dimensional product codes from a partial response channel and to generate a channel detector output with reliability information for the product codes; and an error correction circuit configured to receive the channel detector output and to: i) initialize error correction reliability information for each dimension of respective bits of the product codes to reliability information generated by the channel detector for that bit; ii) iteratively update the error correction reliability information for respective dimensions of each bit serially based on error correction reliability information for each other dimension of that bit; iii) make bit decisions for each bit of the product code based on the updated error correction reliability information for each dimension of that bit from a final update iteration; and in response to errors in the bit decisions after the final update iteration: iv) produce extrinsic reliability information for each bit of the bit decisions; and v) send the bit decisions and extrinsic reliability information to the channel detector, the channel detector further configured to regenerate the channel detector output with reliability information based on the bit decisions and extrinsic reliability information.