A system, transmitter, receiver, method, and computer program product are provided in which a plurality of structured interleavers permute data bits arranged in a data bit matrix for Zigzag encoding. For each interleaver, the data bits in each column of the data bit matrix are cyclically shifted, with the amount of the shift being predefined and different for each column. In addition to the cycle shift, each column may be bit reverse ordered, and entire columns may be swapped. The interleaved data bit matrix may then be encoded using a Zigzag encoder to generate parity bits that may be transmitted, along with the data bits, from a transmitter to a receiver where the data may be iteratively decoded.