In this paper, a new methodology for design of MPSK trellis codes on f
ading channels is proposed. The proposed design criteria, based on eff
ective code length, the minimum product distance and the minimum Eucli
dean distance are used to construct new 8-PSK and 16-PSK trellis codes
with improved bit error rate performance on fading channels. The code
performance is evaluated analytically and by Monte Carlo simulation.
The results show that the proposed codes achieve significant improveme
nts relative to the best known codes.