Systems and methods enabling ultra-high-speed optical transport The systems and methods include receiving a modulated, encoded input stream. Channel impairments are removed using MAP equalization. Symbols are detected in the input stream to produce a stream of encoded data. The stream of encoded data is decoded with one or more low density parity check (LDPC) decoders that use an LDPC code built by modified progressive edge growth. The LDPC code is built by iteratively expanding trees from each variable node until all check nodes are connected to the respective variable node, while controlling both the local girth and the global girth of the code.