The design of trellis coded MPSK for fading channels: set partitioning for optimum code design

A previous work on criteria for designing trellis-coded MPSK modulation to achieve minimum error probability performance on the Rician fading channel (see ibid., vol.36, no.9, p.1004-1012, Sep. 1988) is extended. It is demonstrated that allowing for multiple symbols per trellis branch, i.e., multiple trellis-coded modulation (MTCM), provides an additional degree of freedom for designing a code to meet the optimization on the fading channel. Diversities larger than those achievable with conventional trellis codes having the same number of trellis states are now attainable, it is under these conditions that MTCM achieves its full potential.>