Abstract: Techniques for detecting control data, such as servo data, from input or incoming data read from a magnetic recording medium in the presence of radial incoherence are provided. More specifically, the techniques employ multiple (i.e., two or more) data detectors for choosing between multiple sampling phases associated with the input data read from the magnetic recording medium. In the context of servo data detection, such techniques offer several orders of magnitude in performance improvement in detecting SAM and Gray data in the presence of RI and may advantageously be employed in a read channel integrated circuit. Furthermore, such techniques may be applied to any data encoding system.

Abstract: Techniques for detecting data, such as servo data, from input or incoming data read from a transmission medium, such as magnetic recording medium, in the presence or absence of radial incoherence. In one illustrative recording medium-based aspect of the invention, such a technique for detecting data from input data stored on a recording medium comprises the following steps. First, one or more samples are interpolated from one or more samples which have been generated from the input data at a given symbol rate. The one or more interpolated samples have one or more phases associated therewith which differ from a phase associated with the one or more samples generated at the given symbol rate. Then, an optimum or best phase is selected from the symbol rate phase and the one or more interpolated phases such that at least a portion of the one or more samples associated with the optimum phase are identified as representative of detected data.