Abstract: An implementation of an iterative decoding system within a Trellis Coded Modulation communications environment. In a disclosed embodiment of the present invention, a communication system is described wherein the transmitter uses a channel encoder (consisting of either a convolutional encoder or a block encoder) as an outer encoder. The channel encoded signal is then passed through an interleaver and provided to a Trellis Coded Modulation encoder which acts as an inner encoder. The encoded signal may then be transmitted over the channel. On the decoding side, the disclosed embodiment of the present invention advantageously applies iterative decoding steps to decode the received Trellis Coded Modulated signals, resulting in improved coding gains and a decrease in BER as compared with a conventional non-iterative approach.