In telecommunication, a convolutional code is a type of error-correcting code in which (a) each m-bit information symbol (each m-bit string ) to be encoded is transformed into an n-bit symbol, where m/n is the code rate (n >= m) and (b) the transformation is a function of the last k information symbols, where k is the constraint length of the code.

Convolutional codes are often used to improve the performance of radio and satellite links.

Several algorithms exist for decoding convolutional codes. For relatively small values of k, the Viterbi algorithm is universally used as it provides maximum likelihood performance and is highly parallelizable. Viterbi decoders are thus easy to implement in VLSI hardware and in software on CPUs with SIMD instruction sets. An especially popular Viterbi-decoded convolutional code, used at least since the Voyager program has a constraint length k of 7 and a rate r of 1/2. Longer constraint lengths produce more powerful codes, but the complexity of the Viterbi algorithm increases exponentially with constraint lengths, limiting these more powerful codes to deep space missions where the extra performance is easily worth the increased decoder complexity. Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rover and the Cassini probe to Saturn use a k of 15 and a rate of 1/6; this code performs about 2 dB better than the simpler k=7 code at a cost of 256x in decoding complexity.

Longer constraint length codes are more practically decoded with any of several sequential decoding algorithms, of which the Fano algorithm is the best known. Unlike Viterbi decoding, sequential decoding is not maximum likelihood but its complexity increases only slightly with constraint length, allowing the use of strong, long-constraint-length codes. Such codes were used in the Pioneer program of the early 1970s to Jupiter and Saturn, but gave way to shorter, Viterbi-decoded codes, usually concatenated with large Reed-Solomon error correction codes that steepen the overall bit-error-rate curve and produce extremely low residual undetected error rates.

Simple Viterbi-decoded convolutional codes are now giving way to turbo codes, a new class of iterated short convolutional codes that closely approach the theoretical limits imposed by Shannon's theorem with much less decoding complexity than the Viterbi algorithm on the long convolutional codes that would be required for the same performance. Turbo codes have not yet been concatenated with solid (low complexity) Reed-Solomon error correction codes. However, in the interest of planetary exploration this may someday be done.