The conventional remedy for communication over radio frequency channels has always been diversity (time,frequency, space,...etc), and the usefulness of coding in such a cont-ext is leas widely recognized. In this paper we propose the use of Viterbi decoding technique with non-systematic binary convolutional codes class as an alternative to conventional diversity approaches. This technique falls in the category of computational diversity. The performance of the proposed Viterbi decoding with the (8,4) convolutional, as an example, is evaluated over Rayleigh fading channel. The results are compared to those obtained from using scanning space diversity optimized according to the switching threshold as well as the results from using both selection and optimum space diversity techniques each optimized according to the optimum usable diversity branches. Also, the performance of a model that combines optimum space diversity and Viterbi decoding algorithm with (8,4) convolutional code is examined. The comparison show that the proposed scheme is more powerful and less complex than that of the other considered approaches.