Methods and systems for data transmission

A transmitting apparatus comprising:

• a staircase (SC) encoder for processing a data stream and generating SC coded blocks;
• a framing circuit for generating code frames, each of the code frames comprising a coded section and an uncoded section;
• a first interleaving circuit for distributing SC coded blocks into the coded sections of the code frames, errors associated with staircase coded blocks being spread during the distributing;
• a second interleaving circuit for spreading code frames into interleaved units;
• a Hamming encoder for generating Hamming codewords and inserting the Hamming codewords into interleaved units to form concatenated data;
• a mapping circuit for mapping the concatenated data into QAM symbols, the Hamming codewords being mapped into Hamming QAM symbols;
• a third interleaving circuit for distributing the Hamming QAM symbols;
• a pilot symbol circuit for generating pilot symbols and inserting pilot symbols into the QAM symbols, the pilot symbols being synchronized with Hamming QAM symbols;
• and
• a transmitter for sending data associated with the pilot symbols to a receiver.

A transmitting apparatus comprising:

• a communication interface for receiving a data stream;
• an alignment circuit for aligning the data stream;
• a Reed-Solomon (RS) decoder for removing RS code from the data stream;
• a staircase (SC) encoder for processing data stream and generating SC coded blocks;
• a framing circuit for generating code frames, each of the code frames comprising a coded section and an uncoded section;
• a first interleaving circuit for distributing SC coded blocks into the coded sections of the code frames, burst errors associated with staircase coded blocks being spread during the distributing SC coded blocks;
• a second interleaving circuit for spreading code frames into interleaved units, positions of correlated errors being randomized by the second interleaving circuit during spreading code frames;
• a Hamming encoder for generating Hamming codewords and inserting the Hamming codewords into interleaved units to form concatenated data;
• a mapping circuit for mapping the concatenated data into QAM symbols;
• a third interleaving circuit for distributing the Hamming codewords into the QAM symbols;
• a transmitter for sending data associated with QAM symbols to a receiver.