Improved Bounds on the Performance of Convolutional Codes over the Correlated Rayleigh-Fading Channel

New bounds on the probability of bit error are presented for a communication system with binary antipodal modulation and soft-decision maximum-likelihood decoding over a correlated Rayleigh-fading channel. The bounds are illustrated by considering a system using convolutional encoding. The bounds are closed-form expressions in terms of the code´s transfer function. They are shown to be tighter than previously developed closed-form bounds for communications in correlated Rayleigh fading.