In this paper, we propose $pi$/8 shift 8PSK and trellis-coded $pi$/8 shift 8PSK-OFDM techniques by applying $pi$/4 shift QPSK to trellis-coded modulation (TCM), and performing signal set expansion and set partition correspondingly based on phase difference. In our Viterbi decoding algorithm, up to L phase differences from successively received symbols are employed in the new branch metrics. Such sliding multiple symbol detection (SMSD) method provides improved bit-error-rate (BER) performance in the differential detection of the trellis-coded $pi$/8 shift 8PSK-OFDM signals. The performance improvements are achieved for different communication channels without sacrificing bandwidth and power efficiency. It thus makes the proposed modulation and sliding detection scheme more attractive for power and band-limited systems.