This work focuses on presenting a novel high efficiency channel encoding for transmitting acoustical signals in the hope of improving wireless underwater communication. Yet, water puts a damper on communication capacity, slowing down the signal propagation and creating background noise and echoes. For thus systems and methods for implementing a control channel, e.g., in underwater communication system, are presented below. Aspects of the channel structures used to implement the control channel described herein, can improve error detection capabilities, reduce decoding complexity, and increase transmission efficiency. In certain aspects, transmission efficiency can be increased through using CRC encoding. A circular trellis check and Viterbi decoding can also be used to increase efficiency and maintain error detection capabilities. Symbol Error Rate (SER) can be reduced in embodiments described herein over that of tail-biting convolutional coding with a CRC. Furthermore, error detection offered by Reed Solomon encoder can well compensate underwater noise. Additionally, the encoder packet size can be fixed in order to facilitate decoding and reducing receiver complexity.