Embodiments of this disclosure enhance the error detection performance of parallel polar encoding by cross-concatenating parity bits between segments of information bits transmitted over different sets of sub-channels. In one embodiment, a first segment of information bits is transmitted over a first set of sub-channels, and at least a second segment of information bits, and a masked parity bit, are transmitted over a second set of sub-channels. A value of the masked parity bit is equal to a bitwise combination of a first parity bit computed from the first segment of information bits and a second parity bit computed from the second segment of information bits. The bitwise combination may be a bitwise AND, a bitwise OR, or a bitwise XOR of the respective parity bits.