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The Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes are a well-studied subclass of cyclic codes that have found numerous applications in error correction and notably in quantum information processing. They are widely used in data storage and communication systems. A subclass of attractive BCH codes is the narrow-sense BCH codes over the Galois field ${\mathrm {GF}}(q)$ with length $q+1$ , which are closely related to the action of the projective general linear group of degree two on the projective line. Despite its interest, not much is known about this class of BCH codes. This paper aims to study some of the codes within this class and specifically narrow-sense antiprimitive BCH codes (these codes are also linear complementary duals (LCD) codes that have interesting practical recent applications in cryptography, among other benefits). We shall use tools and combine arguments from algebraic coding theory, combinatorial designs, and group theory (group actions, representation theory of finite groups, etc.) to investigate narrow-sense antiprimitive BCH Codes and extend results from the recent literature. Notably, the dimension, the minimum distance of some $q$ -ary BCH codes with length $q+1$ , and their duals are determined in this paper. The dual codes of the narrow-sense antiprimitive BCH codes derived in this paper include almost MDS codes. Furthermore, the classification of ${\mathrm {PGL}}(2, p^{m})$ -invariant codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(p^{h})$ is completed. As an application of this result, the $p$ -ranks of all incidence structures invariant under the projective general linear group ${\mathrm {PGL}}(2, p^{m})$ are determined. Furthermore, infinite families of narrow-sense BCH codes admitting a 3-transitive automorphism group are obtained. Via these BCH codes, a coding-theory approach to constructing the Witt spherical geometry designs is presented. The BCH codes proposed in this paper are good candidates for permutation decoding, as they have a relatively large group of automorphisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reed–Muller codes belong to the family of affine-invariant codes. As such codes, they have a defining set that determines them uniquely, and they are extensions of cyclic group codes. In this paper, we identify those cyclic codes with multidimensional abelian codes and we use the techniques introduced by Bernal and Simón to construct information sets for them from their defining set. For first- and second-order Reed–Muller codes, we describe a direct method to construct information sets in terms of their basic parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of their efficient encoding and decoding algorithms, cyclic codes—an interesting class of linear codes—are widely used in communication systems, storage devices, and consumer electronics. BCH codes form a special class of cyclic codes, and are usually among the best cyclic codes. A subclass of good BCH codes is the narrow-sense primitive BCH codes. However, the dimension and minimum distance of these codes are not known in general. The main objective of this paper is to study the dimension and minimum distances of a subclass of the narrow-sense primitive BCH codes with design distance \delta =(q-\ell 0)q^{m-\ell 1-1}-1 for certain pairs (\ell 0, \ell 1) , where 0 \leq \ell 0 \leq q-2 and 0 \leq \ell 1 \leq m-1 . The parameters of other related classes of BCH codes are also investigated, and some open problems are proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Symbol-pair codes were introduced by Cassuto and Blaum in 2010 to protect pair errors in symbol-pair read channels. Recently Yaakobi, Bruck and Siegel (2016) generalized this notion to b-symbol codes in order to consider consecutive b errors for a prescribed integer b ≥ 2, and they gave constructions and decoding algorithms. Cyclic codes were considered by various authors as candidates for symbol-pair codes and they established minimum distance bounds on (certain) cyclic codes. In this paper we use algebraic curves over finite fields in order to obtain tight lower and upper bounds on b-symbol Hamming weights of arbitrary cyclic codes over Fq. Here b ≥ 2 is an arbitrary prescribed positive integer and Fq is an arbitrary finite field. We also present a stability theorem for an arbitrary cyclic code C of dimension k and length n: the b-symbol Hamming weight enumerator of C is the same as the k-symbol Hamming weight enumerator of C if k ≤ b ≤ n−1. Moreover, we give improved tight lower and upper bounds on b-symbol Hamming weights of some cyclic codes related to irreducible cyclic codes. Throughout the paper the length n is coprime to q. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a technique to extend any bound for the minimum distance of cyclic codes constructed from its defining sets (ds-bounds) to Abelian (or multivariate) codes through the notion of ${\mathbb B}$ -apparent distance. We also study conditions for an Abelian code to verify that its ${\mathbb B}$ -apparent distance reaches its (true) minimum distance. Then, we construct some codes as an application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of single-round private information retrieval (PIR) from $N$ replicated databases. We consider the case when $B$ databases are outdated (unsynchronized), or even worse, adversarial (Byzantine), and therefore, can return incorrect answers. In the PIR problem with Byzantine databases (BPIR), a user wishes to retrieve a specific message from a set of $M$ messages with zero-error, irrespective of the actions performed by the Byzantine databases. We consider the $T$ -privacy constraint in this paper, where any $T$ databases can collude, and exchange the queries submitted by the user. We derive the information-theoretic capacity of this problem, which is the maximum number of correct symbols that can be retrieved privately (under the $T$ -privacy constraint) for every symbol of the downloaded data. We determine the exact BPIR capacity to be $C=(N-2B)/N \cdot (1-T/(N-2B))/(1-(T/(N-2B))^{M})$ , if $2B+T < N$. This capacity expression shows that the effect of Byzantine databases on the retrieval rate is equivalent to removing $2B$ databases from the system, with a penalty factor of $(N-2B)/N$ , which signifies that even though the number of databases needed for PIR is effectively $N-2B$ , the user still needs to access the entire $N$ databases. The result shows that for the unsynchronized PIR problem, if the user does not have any knowledge about the fraction of the messages that are mis-synchronized, the single-round capacity is the same as the BPIR capacity. Our achievable scheme extends the optimal achievable scheme for the robust PIR (RPIR) problem to correct the errors introduced by the Byzantine databases as opposed to erasures in the RPIR problem. Our converse proof uses the idea of the cut-set bound in the network coding problem against adversarial nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let $p$ be a prime, $s$ be a positive integer, and $\mathcal {R}$ be a finite commutative chain ring with the characteristic as a power of $p$. For a unit $\lambda \in \mathcal {R},~\lambda $ -constacyclic codes of length $p^{s}$ over $\mathcal {R}$ are ideals of the quotient ring $\mathcal {R}[x]/\langle x^{p^{s}}-\lambda \rangle $. In this paper, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which the quotient ring $\mathcal {R}[x]/\langle x^{p^{s}}-\lambda \rangle $ is a chain ring. When $\mathcal {R}[x]/\langle x^{p^{s}}-\lambda \rangle $ is a chain ring, all $\lambda $ -constacyclic codes of length $p^{s}$ over $\mathcal {R}$ are known. In this paper, we establish the algebraic structures of all $\lambda $ -constacyclic codes of length $p^{s}$ over $\mathcal {R}$ when $\mathcal {R}[x]/\langle x^{p^{s}}-\lambda \rangle $ is a non-chain ring. We also determine the number of codewords in each of these codes. Using their algebraic structures, we obtain symbol-pair distances, Rosenbloom–Tsfasman (RT) distances, and RT weight distributions of all constacyclic codes of length $p^{s}$ over $\mathcal {R}$. Apart from this, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a constacyclic code of length $p^{s}$ over $\mathcal {R}$ is maximum-distance separable with respect to the: 1) Hamming metric; 2) symbol-pair metric; and 3) RT metric. We also provide an algorithm to decode the constacyclic codes of length $p^{s}$ over $\mathcal {R}$ using the known decoding algorithms of linear codes over finite fields with respect to the Hamming, symbol-pair, and RT metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we introduce Ouroboros, a new family of Key Exchange protocols based on coding theory. The protocols propose a middle ground between the cryptosystems based on $\mathsf {QC}$ - $\mathsf {MDPC}$ codes, which feature small parameter sizes, but have a security reduction to two problems: the syndrome decoding problem and the indistinguishability of the code, and the HQC protocol, which features bigger parameters but has a security reduction to the syndrome decoding problem only. Ouroboros features a reduction to the syndrome decoding problem with only a small overhead compared to the $\mathsf {QC}$ - $\mathsf {MDPC}$ based cryptosystems. The approach is based on an ideal structure and also works for the rank metric. This yields a simple, secure and efficient approach for key exchange, the Ouroboros family of protocols. For the Hamming metric we obtain the same type of parameters (and almost the same simple decoding) as for $\mathsf {MDPC}$ based cryptosystems, but with a security reduction to decoding random quasi-cyclic codes in the Random Oracle Model. This represents a reduction of up to 38% on the public key size compared to HQC, for the most secure parameters. For the rank metric, we obtain better parameters than for RQC, saving up to 31% on the public key for the most secure set of parameters, using non homogeneous errors in Ouroboros. In this full version, the protocol and decoding algorithm have been slightly improved, additional details are given in the security proof, and the protocol is fully described for the rank metric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyclic codes have been widely used in many applications of communication systems and data storage systems. This paper proposes a new procedure for decoding cyclic codes up to actual minimum distance. The decoding procedure consists of two steps: 1) computation of known syndromes and 2) computation of error positions and error values simultaneously. To do so, a matrix whose all entries are syndromes is called syndrome matrix. A matrix whose entries are either syndromes or the elements of a finite field is said to be partial syndrome matrix. In this paper, two novel methods are presented to determine error positions and error values simultaneously and directly. The first method uses a new partial syndrome matrix along with Gaussian elimination. The partial syndrome matrices for binary (respectively, ternary) cyclic codes of lengths from 69 to 99 (respectively, 16 to 37) are tabulated. For some cyclic codes, the partial syndrome matrices contain unknown syndromes; the second method constructs a matrix from a system of equations, which is generated by the determinants of different partial syndrome matrices and makes use of Gaussian elimination to determine its row rank. Many more cyclic codes beyond the Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem bound can be decoded with these methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partial syndrome matrices and weak-locator polynomials have received considerable attention in recent years due to their applications in decoding cyclic codes. The technical contribution of this paper is threefold: 1) cyclic codes can be decoded by the newly proposed partial syndrome matrices, which generalize the previously known results on the determination of error positions; 2) a new type of polynomial associated with error locations, called radical-locator polynomial, is defined, which includes the weak-locator polynomial as a special case; and 3) a novel class of matrices with many zero entries, called row-echelon partial syndrome matrices, is presented, based on the Newton identities, for efficiently decoding cyclic codes. It is also shown that the radical-locator polynomials can be obtained from the determinants of the above-mentioned (row-echelon) partial syndrome matrices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A class of cyclic codes has recently been decoded by using the weak-locator polynomials instead of the conventional error-locator polynomials. In this paper, a generalization of weak-locator polynomials to the multivariate cases, called the multivariate weak-locator polynomials, is defined, and a new matrix whose determinant can be expressed as a multivariate weak-locator polynomial is developed for cyclic codes. Moreover, a modified matrix along with Gaussian elimination found herein enables one to determine error positions precisely. The presented matrices result in a reduction of the number of syndromes when compared with the previously known matrices. The simulation shows that, for example, with the capability of correcting more errors, a considerably sophistical scheme of decoding the (97, 49, 15) binary cyclic code based on the proposed matrices is around 115 times faster than other existing decoders. Therefore, in general, it is developed to facilitate faster decoding of a large class of cyclic codes and is naturally suitable for the software implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the list decoding property of codes under insertion and deletion errors (insdel for short). Firstly, we analyse the list decodability of random insdel codes. Our result provides a more complete picture on the list decodability of insdel codes when both insertion and deletion errors happen. Secondly, we construct a family of insdel codes along with their efficient encoding and decoding algorithms through concatenation method which provides a Zyablov-type bound for insdel metric codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burst errors are a type of distortion in many data communications and data storage channels. In this paper, we consider the list decodability of codes for single burst error case and phased-burst error case independently. Firstly, we analyze the list decodability of random codes, and we show that the burst list decoding radius and the rate of random codes achieve the Singleton bound and the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for single case and phased case, respectively. Second, we illustrate that cyclic codes and algebraic geometry codes are good burst list-decodable codes for single case and phased case, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the algebraic constructions of quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes with the unequal error protection (UEP) property are considered. A criterion for constructing such codes via the masking technique is proposed, based on which explicit conditions on the base parity-check matrices and masking matrices to achieve UEP are provided. We also give three specific constructions of UEP QC-LDPC codes. Furthermore, a sufficient condition to ensure strict UEP is presented. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our constructed codes over time-sharing schemes. The constructed codes also have competitive error performance against randomly constructed equal-error-protection LDPC codes and irregular UEP LDPC codes designed based on the degree distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is well-known that the decoding of algebraic codes with error locators have been extensively conceived in the literature over a half century. The radical locator, which is an $\omega $ th root of error locator, has recently been discovered. This paper focuses on the two classes of radical locators. The first is complete radical locators, where all the locators are assigned to radical locators. The second is partial radical locators in that there are only a few locators being radical locators. In the former case based on complete radical locators, a new square matrix whose determinant is a univariate radical-locator polynomial is proposed. In particular, this matrix is modified to allow a large square matrix. It can be transformed by Gaussian elimination to the matrix in a row-echelon form in which zeros appearing in the diagonal entries of the current matrix are able to determine errors implicitly. Furthermore, this work further extends the previous results from the univariate case to multivariate cases. The matrix methods found herein enable one to decode a large class of cyclic codes efficiently. In the latter case, the cyclotomic cosets are a practical approach to select a small subset of positive integers. They are employed to develop partial radical locators. Finally, in contrast with the complete radical locators, the algebraic decoding methods make a natural use of partial radical locators more widely and flexibly to arbitrary cyclic codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes which are known as QC-LDPC codes, have many applications due to their simple encoding implementation by the means of cyclic shift registers. In this paper, we construct QC-LDPC codes from group rings. A group ring is a free module (at the same time a ring) constructed in a natural way from any given ring and any given group. We present a structure based on the elements of a group ring for constructing QC-LDPC codes. Some of the previously addressed methods for constructing QC-LDPC codes based on finite fields are special cases of the proposed construction method. The constructed QC-LDPC codes perform very well over the additive white Gaussian noise channel with iterative decoding in terms of bit-error probability and block-error probability. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed codes have competitive performance in comparison with the similar existing LDPC codes. Finally, we propose a new encoding method for the proposed group ring-based QC-LDPC codes that can be implemented faster than the current encoding methods. The encoding complexity of the proposed method is analyzed mathematically, and indicates a significate reduction in the required number of operations, even when compared to the available efficient encoding methods that have linear time and space complexities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Symbol-pair read channels, in which the outputs of the read process are pairs of consecutive symbols, were recently studied by Cassuto and Blaum. This new paradigm is motivated by the limitations of the reading process in high density data storage systems. They studied error correction in this new paradigm, specifically, the relationship between the minimum Hamming distance of an error correcting code and the minimum pair distance, which is the minimum Hamming distance between symbol-pair vectors derived from codewords of the code. It was proved that for a linear cyclic code with minimum Hamming distance dH , the corresponding minimum pair distance is at least dH+3 . In this paper, we show that, for a given linear cyclic code with a minimum Hamming distance dH , the minimum pair distance is at least dH +\left \lceil{ {dH/{2}}}\right \rceil . We then describe a decoding algorithm, based upon a bounded distance decoder for the cyclic code, whose symbol-pair error correcting capabilities reflect the larger minimum pair distance. Finally, we consider the case where the read channel output is a larger number, $b \geqslant 3$ , of consecutive symbols, and we provide extensions of several concepts, results, and code constructions to this setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quadratic residue codes are a well-known class of codes. In this paper, we consider the constructions of self-dual codes by higher power residues, especially fourth power residues. New infinite families of self-dual codes over GF(2), GF(3), GF(4), GF(8), and GF(9) are introduced. Some of them have better minimum weight than previously known codes. We also give general results related to the automorphism group of some of these codes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Linear network coding over finite fields is a well-studied problem. We consider the more general setting of linear coding for directed acyclic networks with finite commutative ring alphabets. Our results imply that for scalar linear network coding over commutative rings, fields can always be used when the alphabet size is flexible, but other rings may be needed when the alphabet size is fixed. We prove that if a network has a scalar linear solution over some finite commutative ring, then the (unique) smallest such commutative ring is a field. We also show that fixed-size commutative rings are quasi-ordered, such that all the scalar linearly solvable networks over any given ring are also scalar linearly solvable over any higher-ordered ring. We study commutative rings that are maximal with respect to this quasi-order, as they may be considered the best commutative rings of a given size. We prove that a commutative ring is maximal if and only if some network is scalar linearly solvable over the ring, but not over any other commutative ring of the same size. Furthermore, we show that maximal commutative rings are direct products of certain fields specified by the integer partitions of the prime factor multiplicities of the ring’s size. Finally, we prove that there is a unique maximal commutative ring of size $m$ if and only if each prime factor of m$ has multiplicity in {1, 2, 3, 4, 6}. As consequences, 1) every finite field is such a maximal ring and 2) for each prime p$ , some network is scalar linearly solvable over a commutative ring of size but not over the field of the same size if and only if k \not \in \{1,2,3,4,6\} . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Symbol-pair codes introduced by Cassuto and Blaum (2010) are designed to protect against pair errors in symbol-pair read channels. The higher the minimum pair distance, the more pair errors the code can correct. Maximum distance separable (MDS) symbol-pair codes are optimal in the sense that pair distance cannot be improved for given length and code size. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we present three lower bounds for the minimum pair distance of constacyclic codes, the first two of which generalize the previously known results due to Cassuto and Blaum (2011) and Kai et al. (2015). The third one exhibits a lower bound for the minimum pair distance of repeated-root cyclic codes. Second, we obtain new MDS symbol-pair codes with minimum pair distance seven and eight through repeated-root cyclic codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present algorithms for initializing a convolutional network coding (CNC) scheme in networks that may contain cycles. An initialization process for finding global encoding kernels (GEK) is needed if the network is unknown or if local encoding kernels are chosen randomly. During the initialization process every source node transmits basis vectors and every sink node gets the impulse response of the network. The impulse response is then used to find the GEK, which are needed for a decoding algorithm and to find the set of all achievable rates. We present two initialization algorithms that find the GEK and one algorithm that finds achievable rates from the GEK. In the first initialization algorithm it is assumed that we can perform a reset operation on the network at some fixed times, while the second algorithm does not operate under this assumption. Unlike acyclic networks, for which it is sufficient to transmit basis vectors one after another, the initialization of cyclic networks is more involved, as test symbols from different times interfere with each other and the impulse response is of infinite duration. Our algorithms use only a finite number of the initial values of the impulse response to find the full GEK. This is possible because a CNC scheme can be described by a state space representation and, using the Cayley-Hamilton theorem, it is possible to find its full impulse response from its initial values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A general criterion to obtain $s$ -PD-sets of minimum size $s+1$ for partial permutation decoding, which enable correction up to $s$ errors, for systematic codes over a finite field ${ {F}}_{q}$ and ${ {Z}}_{4}$ -linear codes is provided. We show how this technique can be easily applied to linear cyclic codes over ${ {F}}_{q}$ , ${ {Z}}_{4}$ -linear codes which are the Gray map image of a quaternary linear cyclic code, and some related codes such as quasi-cyclic codes. Furthermore, specific results for some linear and nonlinear binary codes, including simplex, Kerdock, Delsarte-Goethals, and extended dualized Kerdock codes are given. Finally, applying this technique, new $s$ -PD-sets of size $s+1$ for ${ {Z}}_{4}$ -linear Hadamard codes of type $2^\gamma 4^\delta $ , for all $\delta \geq 4$ and $1< s\leq 2^\delta -3$ ; and for ${ {Z}}_{4}$ -linear simplex codes of type $4^{m}$ , for all $m\geq 2$ and $1< s\leq 2^{m+1}-3$ , are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a framework for constructing efficient code-based encryption schemes that do not hide any structure in their public matrix. The framework is in the spirit of the schemes first proposed by Alekhnovich in 2003 and based on the difficulty of decoding random linear codes from random errors of low weight. We depart somewhat from Alekhnovich’s approach and propose an encryption scheme based on the difficulty of decoding random quasi-cyclic codes. We propose two new cryptosystems instantiated within our framework: the hamming quasi-cyclic cryptosystem (HQC), based on the hamming metric, and the rank quasi-cyclic cryptosystem (RQC), based on the rank metric. We give a security proof, which reduces the indistinguishability under chosen plaintext attack security of our systems to a decision version of the well-known problem of decoding random families of quasi-cyclic codes for the hamming and rank metrics (the respective \mathsf QCSD and \mathsf RQCSD problems). We also provide an analysis of the decryption failure probability of our scheme in the Hamming metric case: for the rank metric there is no decryption failure. Our schemes benefit from a very fast decryption algorithm together with small key sizes of only a few thousand bits. The cryptosystems are very efficient for low encryption rates and are very well suited to key exchange and authentication. Asymptotically, for \lambda the security parameter, the public key sizes are respectively in \mathcal {O}({\lambda }^{2}) for HQC and in \mathcal {O}\left({\lambda ^{\frac {4}{3}}}\right)$ for RQC. Practical parameter compares well to the systems based on ring-learning parity with noise or the recent moderate density parity check codes system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An explicit construction of an infinite family of cyclic codes is presented which, over GF(4) (resp., GF(8)), have approximately 8/9 (resp., 48/49) the redundancy of BCH codes of the same minimum distance and length. As such, the new codes are the best codes currently known in a regime where the minimum distance is fixed and the code length goes to infinity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]