We introduce a differential space-time block code (DSTBC) integrated with trellis coded modulation with two transmit antennas. Our scheme enables transmission of DSTBC encoded symbols as trellis metric rather than concatenating an outer code. Unlike conventional DSTBC, different transmit symbol phase rotations are used for each transmit antenna in order to obtain more options for trellis branch. The set partitioning for proposed codes is derived as well. The decoder computes decision statistic using Viterbi Algorithm with different number of states undergoing Rayleigh fading channels. This approach can provide full diversity gain as well as coding gain simultaneously remaining full transmit rate, which cannot be obtained by conventional DSTBC.

Recently, space-time multiple trellis coded modulation (ST-MTCM) has been introduced in order to achieve maximum transmit diversity gain and larger coding gain with the existance of parallel paths, which can not be achieved with STTCM system. In order to achieve good performance, it is crucial to maximize the intra-distance, which is defined by parallel paths and determine the performance. Conventional ST-MTCM uses a generator matrix G for coded modulation; however, we find that no matrix can be designed which can maximize the intra-distance by computer search. In this paper, we focus on maximizing the intra-distance and the diversity gain, and hence design a new coded modulation scheme. We use trellis codes in this paper which cannot be described by a matrix G. The proposed codes can achieve the maximum intra-distance and thus good coding gain, which may not be achieved by conventional codes. We also show that the proposed code can achieve good performance both in quasi-static and fast flat fading channels without the need for changing the codes as is necessary in the conventional ST-MTCM scheme.