Interleaving and decoding scheme for a product code for a mobile data communication

We propose a new ordered decoding scheme for a product code for mobile data communications. The ordered decoding scheme determines the order of decoding for both row and column component codewords according to the probability of decoding the component codeword correctly. Component codewords are decoded independently. To randomize burst errors in both row and column codewords, a diagonal interleaving scheme is used for code symbols in the codeword. It is shown that the ordered decoding scheme combined with diagonal interleaving improves the performance of a product code with reasonably long code length for mobile data communications.