A novel scarce-state-transition (SST) type trellis decoding system for (n,n-1) convolutional codes with coherent BPSK signals is proposed. The new system retains the same number of binary comparisons as the syndrome-former trellis decoding technique. Like the original SST-type encoder trellis technique, the proposed system is also suitable for CMOS VLSI implementation. A combination of the two techniques results in a less complex and low power consumption decoding system.

New good rate-P/(P+/spl delta/) rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes for 2/spl les/P/spl les/7 and 1/spl les//spl delta//spl les/(n-1)P were found and tabulated, These codes have been determined by iterative search based upon a criterion of maximizing the free distance and were generated by periodically puncturing their rate-1/n mother codes of memory 2/spl les/M/spl les/6 and n=2. These codes are expected to find their applications in unequal error protection schemes employing Viterbi decoding.>