In a communication system, parallel encoding and decoding of serially-coded data occurs in a manner that supports low latency communication. A plurality of data items may be coded as serially-coded data sequences and a transmission sequence may be built from them. An index table may be built having a plurality of entries representing respective start points of the serially-coded data sequences within the transmission sequence. The transmission sequence may be transmitted to a channel and, thereafter, the index table may be transmitted. Latencies otherwise involved in inserting an index table into the beginning of a transmission sequence may be avoided.