An extended deinterleaver the extended deinterleaver being responsive to at least one input signal, comprised of codewords, and operative to generate a deinterleaved output signal. The extended deinterleaver comprising a storage space organized into B number of appended storage branches, at least one appended storage branch having a storage branch and at least one element N, the received codewords being deinterleaved and buffered by the extended deinterleaver prior to being provided to the variable iteration decoder. Each appended storage branch further having a length that is extended by the length of N, N being at least one element, wherein as a codeword is provided to the variable iteration decoder, other codewords are provided to subsequent appended storage branches, and further wherein each appended storage branch, indexed by ‘b’, has a length of Lb+N, wherein Lb is the length of the storage branch prior to appending N.