A design of super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes （SOSTTCs） based on the trace criterion （TC） is proposed for improving the design of SOSTTCs. The shortcomings of the rank and determinant criteria based design and the advantages of the TC-based design are analyzed. The optimization principle of four factors is presented, which includes the space-time block coding （STBC） scheme, set partitioning, trellis structure, and the assignment of signal subsets and STBC schemes in the trellis. According to this principle, systematical and handcrafted design steps are given in detail. By constellation expansion, the code performance can be further improved. The code design results are given, and the new codes outperform others in the simulation.
