A 4+12+16 amplitude phase shift keying (APSK) modulation outperforms other 32-APSK modulations in a nonlinear additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel because of its intrinsic robustness against AM/AM and AM/PM distortions caused by the nonlinear characteristics of a high-power amplifier. Thus, this modulation scheme has been adopted in the digital video broadcasting-satellite2 European standard. And it has been considered for high rate transmission of telemetry data on deep space communications in consultative committee for space data systems which provides a forum for discussion of common problems in the development and operation of space data systems. In this paper, we present an improved bits-to-symbol mapping scheme with a better bit error rate for a 4+12+16 APSK signal in a nonlinear AWGN channel and propose a simple signal detection algorithm for the 4+12+16 APSK from the presented bit mapping.