Iterative soft-minimum mean-square error equalization for digital nonlinear page-oriented memories

Digital page-oriented volume holographic memory (POVHM) is a promising candidate for next-generation ultrahigh capacity optical data storage technology. As the capacity of the POVHMs increases, the bit error rate performance of the system is degraded due to increased interpixel interference (IPI) and noise. To improve the system performance under these adverse effects and to increase the capacity, joint iterative soft equalization-detection and error correction decoding might be attractive. To address that, by considering the nonlinearity inherent in the channel, an iterative soft equalization method that is optimized in the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) sense, called the iterative soft-MMSE (ISMMSE) equalization, is devised. The performance of the ISMMSE is evaluated by use of numerical experiments under different amounts of IPI and optical noise. Simulation results suggest that the ISMMSE is a good candidate for an ultrahigh capacity POVHM, which employs joint iterative equalization-detection and decoding.