Methods and devices are disclosed for encoding and decoding convolutional codes in a communication system. In various embodiments of the disclosure, a codeword comprises message data and parity data. A convolutional codeword is generated by multiplying the message data and the parity data with a convolutional polynomial. The convolutional codeword may be decoded by a convolutional code decoder that uses the convolutional polynomial and a maximum likelihood divisor to obtain a maximum likelihood message from the convolutional codeword.