1. A serially concatenated convolutional code decoder comprising: a data converter for processing soft demodulator data derived from a demodulator to generate log of probabilities data; an inner decoder comprising a forward recursion metric in parallel with a backward recursion metric that process the log of probabilities data received from the data converter and are coupled to a soft log-likelihood calculation processor that generates inner decoded soft data; a de-interleaver that de-interleaves the inner decoded soft data; an outer decoder comprising a forward recursion metric in parallel with a backward recursion metric that are coupled to a soft log-likelihood calculation processor that processes de-interleaved inner decoded soft data to generate outer decoded soft data; an interleaver for feeding back the outer decoded soft data to the inner decoder; and a decision processor for processing the outer-coded soft data to generate decoded data.