A Random Coding Bound for Rate k / n Fixed Convolutional Codes ∗

SUMMARY In order to guarantee pairwise independence of codewords in an ensemble of convolutional codes it is necessary to consider time-varying codes. However, Seguin has shown [1] that the pairwise independence property is not strictly necessary when applying the random coding argument and on this basis he derives a new random coding bound for rate 1/n fixed convo-lutional codes [2]. In this paper we show that a similar random coding bound can be obtained for rate k/n fixed convolutional codes.