A method for turbo-encoding a block of data including: receiving data bits of the block of data; masking irrelevant data bits by a masking unit, wherein irrelevant data bits are data bits that regardless of their value do not affect a final state of an interleaved convolutional encoder of a turbo encoder; calculating a last state of the interleaved convolutional encoder based on relevant data bits provided by the masking unit; wherein the calculating of the last state of the interleaved convolutional encoder is initialized before receiving the entire block of data; finding an initial state of the interleaved convolutional encoder based on the last state of the interleaved convolutional encoder; wherein the initial state of the interleaved convolutional encoder equals a final state of the interleaved convolutional encoder; initializing the interleaved convolutional encoder to the initial state; and turbo-encoding the interleaved data bits by the interleaved convolutional encoder.