A geometric construction procedure for geometrically uniform trellis codes

The problem of maximizing the minimum free squared Euclidean distance of a trellis code is developed from a geometric point of view. This approach provides a new way of constructing constellations for trellis coding. A decomposition of the trellis topology leads to a systematic construction of signal sets and generators for geometrically uniform trellis codes. An algorithm is proposed to construct geometrically uniform trellis codes, and examples show how to obtain large free distance trellis codes. This approach unifies the construction of convolutional codes over the binary field and trellis codes over the real field.