Constructions of rate (n-1)/n punctured convolutional codes with minimum required SNR criterion

Rate (n-1)/n punctured convolutional codes (n up to 10 and memory length up to 8) are constructed which minimize the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a bit-error rate (BER) of 10^-9 with and without the restriction of using only four different code generators. Many of these codes improve the free distance and reduce the required SNR more than half a decibel over previously reported codes with the same parameters. This is equivalent to reducing the decoder complexity by one half for the same performance. These codes have many potential applications in systems that require performance improvements with little room for coding overhead