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Let m be an even positive integer. A Boolean bent function ƒ on F2m-1 × F2 is called a cyclic bent function if for any a ≠ b ∈ F2m-1 and ε ∈ F2, ƒ(ax1, x2)+ ƒ(bx1, x2 + ε) is always bent, where x1 ∈ F2m-1, x2 ∈ F2. Cyclic bent functions look extremely rare. This paper focuses on cyclic bent functions on F2m-1 × F2 and their applications. The first objective of this paper is to establish a link between quadratic cyclic bent functions and a special type of prequasifields, and construct a class of quadratic cyclic bent functions from the Kantor-Williams prequasifields. The second objective is to use cyclic bent functions to construct families of optimal sequences. The results of this paper show that cyclic bent functions have nice applications in several fields such as coding theory, symmetric cryptography, and CDMA communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study two families of codes with availability, namely, private information retrieval (PIR) codes and batch codes. While the former requires that every information symbol has $k$ mutually disjoint recovering sets, the latter imposes this property for each multiset request of $k$ information symbols. The main problem under this paradigm is to minimize the number of redundancy symbols. We denote this value by $r_{P}(n,k)$ and $r_{B}(n,k)$ , for PIR codes and batch codes, respectively, where $n$ is the number of information symbols. Previous results showed that for any constant $k$ , $r_{P}(n,k) = \Theta (\sqrt {n})$ and $r_{B}(n,k)= {\mathcal{ O}}(\sqrt {n}\log (n))$. In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of these codes for non-constant $k$ and specifically for $k=\Theta (n^\epsilon)$. We also study the largest value of $k$ such that the rate of the codes approaches 1 and show that for all $\epsilon < 1$ , $r_{P}(n,n^\epsilon) = o(n)$ and $r_{B}(n,n^\epsilon) = o(n)$. Furthermore, several more results are proved for the case of fixed $k$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the simultaneous partial-inverse problem (SPI) for polynomials and develops its application to decoding interleaved Reed–Solomon codes beyond half the minimum distance. While closely related both to standard key equations and to well-known Padé approximation problems, the SPI problem stands out in several respects. First, the SPI problem has a unique solution (up to a scale factor), which satisfies a natural degree bound. Second, the SPI problem can be transformed (monomialized) into an equivalent SPI problem where all moduli are monomials. Third, the SPI problem can be solved by an efficient algorithm of the Berlekamp–Massey type. Fourth, decoding interleaved Reed–Solomon codes (or subfield-evaluation codes) beyond half the minimum distance can be analyzed in terms of a partial-inverse condition for the error pattern: if that condition is satisfied, then the (true) error locator polynomial is the unique solution of a standard key equation and can be computed in many different ways, including the well-known multi-sequence Berlekamp–Massey algorithm and the SPI algorithm of this paper. Two of the best performance bounds from the literature (the Schmidt–Sidorenko–Bossert bound and the Roth–Vontobel bound) are generalized to hold for the partial-inverse condition and thus to apply to several different decoding algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An additive white Gaussian noise energy-harvesting channel with an infinite-sized battery is considered. The energy arrival process is modeled as a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables. The channel capacity $\frac {1}{2}\log (1+P)$ is achievable by the so-called best-effort and save-and-transmit schemes where $P$ denotes the battery recharge rate. This paper analyzes the save-and-transmit scheme whose transmit power is strictly less than $P$ and the best-effort scheme as a special case of save-and-transmit without a saving phase. In the finite blocklength regime, we obtain new non-asymptotic achievable rates for these schemes that approach the capacity with gaps vanishing at rates proportional to $1/\sqrt {n}$ and $({(\log n)/n})^{1/2}$ respectively where $n$ denotes the blocklength. The proof technique involves analyzing the escape probability of a Markov process. When $P$ is sufficiently large, we show that allowing the transmit power to back off from $P$ can improve the performance for save-and-transmit. The results are extended to a block energy arrival model where the length of each energy block $L$ grows sublinearly in $n$. We show that the save-and-transmit and best-effort schemes achieve coding rates that approach the capacity with gaps vanishing at rates proportional to $\sqrt {L/n}$ and $({\max \{\log n, L\}/n})^{1/2}$ , respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity are important cryptographic primitives in some stream ciphers. In this paper, two methodologies for constructing minimal binary codes from sets, Boolean functions and vectorial Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity, are proposed. More precisely, a general construction of new minimal codes using minimal codes contained in Reed-Muller codes and sets without nonzero low degree annihilators is presented. The other construction allows us to yield minimal codes from certain subcodes of Reed-Muller codes and vectorial Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity. Via these general constructions, infinite families of minimal binary linear codes of dimension $m$ and length less than or equal to $m(m+1)/2$ are obtained. Besides, a lower bound on the minimum distance of the proposed minimal linear codes is established. Conjectures and open problems are also presented. The results of this paper show that Boolean functions with high algebraic immunity have nice applications in several fields additionally to symmetric cryptography, such as coding theory and secret sharing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the list decodability of symbol-pair codes in this paper. First, we show that the list decodability of every symbol-pair code does not exceed the Gilbert–Varshamov bound. On the other hand, we are able to prove that with high probability, a random symbol-pair code can be list decoded up to the Gilbert–Varshamov bound. Our second result of this paper is to derive the Johnson-type bound, i.e., a lower bound on list decoding radius in terms of minimum distance. Finally, we present a list decoding algorithm of Reed–Solomon codes beyond the Johnson-type bound in the pair metric. 1 A symbol-pair code is referred to a code in the pair metric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partial MDS (PMDS) codes are a class of erasure-correcting array codes that combine local correction of the rows with global correction of the array. An $\boldsymbol {m}\times \boldsymbol {n}$ array code is called an $(\boldsymbol {r};\boldsymbol {s})$ PMDS code if each row belongs to an ${[}\boldsymbol {n},\boldsymbol {n}-\boldsymbol {r}, \boldsymbol {r}+\textbf {1}{]}$ MDS code and the code can correct erasure patterns consisting of $\boldsymbol {r}$ erasures in each row together with $\boldsymbol {s}$ more erasures anywhere in the array. While a recent construction by Calis and Koyluoglu generates $(\boldsymbol {r};\boldsymbol {s})$ PMDS codes for all $\boldsymbol {r}$ and $\boldsymbol {s}$ , its field size is exponentially large. In this paper, a family of PMDS codes with field size ${\mathcal{ O}}\left ({\max \{\boldsymbol {m},\boldsymbol {n}^{\boldsymbol {r}+\boldsymbol {s}}\}^{\boldsymbol {s}} }\right)$ is presented for the case where $\boldsymbol {r}= {\mathcal{ O}}(1), \boldsymbol {s}= {\mathcal{ O}}(1)$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear codes with few weights have applications in consumer electronics, communications, data storage systems, secret sharing, authentication codes, and association schemes. As a special class of linear codes, minimal linear codes have important applications in secret sharing and secure computation of data between two parties. The construction of minimal linear codes with new and desirable parameters is an interesting research topic in coding theory and cryptography. Recently, Mesnager et.al. stated that “constructing linear codes with good parameters from non-weakly regular bent functions is an interesting problem.” The goal of this paper is to construct linear codes with two or three weights from non-weakly regular bent functions over finite fields and analyze the minimality of the constructed linear codes. In doing so, we draw inspiration from a paper by Mesnager in which she constructed linear codes with small weights from weakly regular bent functions based on a generic construction method. First, we recall the definitions of the subsets $B_{+}(f)$ and $B_{-}(f)$ associated with a non-weakly regular bent function $f$. Next, we construct two- or three-weight linear $p$ -ary codes on these sets using duals of the non-weakly regular bent functions that are also bent. We note that the constructed linear codes are minimal in almost all cases. Moreover, when $f$ is a non-weakly regular bent function in a certain subclass of Generalized Maiorana-McFarland bent functions, we determine the weight distributions of the corresponding linear codes. As far as we know, the construction of linear codes from non-weakly regular bent functions over finite fields is first studied in the literature by the second author in his dissertation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Index coding studies multiterminal source-coding problems where a set of receivers are required to decode multiple (possibly different) messages from a common broadcast, and they each know some messages a priori. In this paper, at the receiver end, we consider a special setting where each receiver knows only one message a priori, and each message is known to only one receiver. At the broadcasting end, we consider a generalized setting where there could be multiple senders, and each sender knows a subset of the messages. The senders collaborate to transmit an index code. This paper looks at minimizing the number of total coded bits the senders are required to transmit. When there is only one sender, we propose a pruning algorithm to find a lower bound on the optimal (i.e., the shortest) index codelength, and show that it is achievable by linear index codes. When there are two or more senders, we propose an appending technique to be used in conjunction with the pruning technique to give a lower bound on the optimal index codelength; we also derive an upper bound based on cyclic codes. While the two bounds do not match in general, for the special case where no two distinct senders know any message in common, the bounds match, giving the optimal index codelength. The results are expressed in terms of strongly connected components in directed graphs that represent the index-coding problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the wireline two-unicast-Z communication network over directed acyclic graphs. The two-unicast- $Z$ network is a two-unicast network where the destination intending to decode the second message has a priori side information of the first message. We make three contributions in this paper. First, we describe a new linear network coding algorithm for two-unicast-Z networks over the directed acyclic graphs. Our approach includes the idea of interference alignment as one of its key ingredients. For the graphs of a bounded degree, our algorithm has linear complexity in terms of the number of vertices, and the polynomial complexity in terms of the number of edges. Second, we prove that our algorithm achieves the rate pair (1, 1) whenever it is feasible in the network. Our proof serves as an alternative, albeit restricted to two-unicast-Z networks over the directed acyclic graphs, to an earlier result of Wang et al., which studied the necessary and sufficient conditions for the feasibility of the rate pair (1, 1) in two-unicast networks. Third, we provide a new proof of the classical max-flow min-cut theorem for the directed acyclic graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show that the maximum number of bent component functions of a vectorial function F:GF(2)^n\to GF(2)^n is 2^n-2^n/2 . We also show that it is very easy to construct such functions. However, it is a much more challenging task to find such functions in polynomial form F\in GF(2^n)[x] , where F has only a few terms. The only known power functions having such a large number of bent components are x^{d} , where d=2^{n/2}+1 . In this paper, we show that the binomials F^i(x)=x^2^i(x+x^2^n/2) also have such a large number of bent components, and these binomials are inequivalent to the monomials x^2^n/2+1 if 0

Recently, Etzion et al. introduced metrics on ${\mathbb{F}}_{2}^{n}$ based on directed graphs on $n$ vertices and developed some basic coding theory on directed graph metric spaces. In this paper, we consider the problem of classifying directed graphs, which admit the extended Hamming codes to be a perfect code. We first consider weighted poset metrics as a natural generalization of poset metrics and investigate interrelation between the weighted poset metrics and the directed graph-based metrics. In the next, we classify weighted posets on a set with eight elements and directed graphs on eight vertices, which admit the extended Hamming code $\tilde {\mathcal {H }}_{3}$ to be a two-perfect code. We also construct some families of such structures for any $k \geq 3$ , which can be viewed as generalizations of some results presented by Etzion et al. and Hyun and Kim. Those families enable us to construct packing or covering codes of radius 2 under certain maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some physical effects that limit the reliability and performance of multilevel flash memories induce errors that have low magnitudes and are dominantly asymmetric. This motivated the application of the asymmetric limited magnitude error model in flash memory. In this paper, we present a new construction of quasi-perfect codes for such errors, and we also study the perfect codes with symmetric errors. Moreover, we show some nonexistence results on perfect codes for correcting single error of limited magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Codes that can correct up to $t$ symmetric errors and detect all unidirectional errors, known as $t$ -EC-AUED codes, are studied in this paper. Given positive integers $q$ , $a$ , and $t$ , let $n_{q}(a,t+1)$ denote the length of the shortest $q$ -ary $t$ -EC-AUED code of size $a$. We introduce combinatorial constructions for $q$ -ary $t$ -EC-AUED codes via one-factorizations of complete graphs, and concatenation of MDS codes and codes from resolvable set systems. Consequently, we determine the exact values of $n_{q}(a,t+1)$ for several new infinite families of $q,a$ , and $t$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, new index coding problems are studied, where each receiver has erroneous side information. Although side information is a crucial part of index coding, the existence of erroneous side information has not been considered yet. We study an index code with receivers that have erroneous side information symbols in the error-free broadcast channel, which is called an index code with side information errors (ICSIE). The encoding and decoding procedures of the ICSIE are proposed, based on the syndrome decoding. Then, we derive the bounds on the optimal codelength of the proposed index code with erroneous side information. Furthermore, we introduce a special graph for the proposed index coding problem, called a \delta s -cycle whose properties are similar to those of the cycle in the conventional index coding problem. Properties of the ICSIE are also discussed in the \delta s -cycle and clique. Finally, the proposed ICSIE is generalized to an index code for the scenario having both additive channel errors and side information errors, called a generalized error correcting index code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since discovery of Goppa geometric codes, people have been asking the question: are there different constructions of block codes from algebraic curves that give the same parameters as Goppa geometric codes. Despite of great effort by researchers, no such constructions have been found so far. Although in literature, there are many constructions of block code from algebraic curves, most of them are quite different from the one by Goppa in nature and thus they have different parameters. Some of these constructions have the same parameters as Goppa geometric codes, however it was proved that these are essentially the same codes defined by Goppa. In this paper, we solve this question for the case where the characteristic of the ground field is 2, namely, we present a different construction of block codes from algebraic curves that give the same parameters as Goppa geometric codes for the characteristic 2 case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers a base station that delivers packets to multiple receivers through a sequence of coded transmissions. All receivers overhear the same transmissions. Each receiver may already have some of the packets as side information, and requests another subset of the packets. This problem is known as the index coding problem and can be represented by a bipartite digraph. An integer linear program is developed that provides a lower bound on the minimum number of transmissions required for any coding algorithm. Conversely, its linear programming relaxation is shown to provide an upper bound that is achievable by a simple form of vector linear coding. Thus, the information theoretic optimum is bounded by the integrality gap between the integer program and its linear relaxation. In the special case, when the digraph has a planar structure, the integrality gap is shown to be zero, so that exact optimality is achieved. Finally, for nonplanar problems, an enhanced integer program is constructed that provides a smaller integrality gap. The dual of this problem corresponds to a more sophisticated partial clique coding strategy that time-shares between maximum distance separable codes. This paper illuminates the relationship between index coding, duality, and integrality gaps between integer programs and their linear relaxations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Data shuffling between distributed cluster of nodes is one of the critical steps in implementing large-scale learning algorithms. Randomly shuffling the data-set among a cluster of workers allows different nodes to obtain fresh data assignments at each learning epoch. This process has been shown to provide improvements in the learning process (via testing and training error). However, the statistical benefits of distributed data shuffling come at the cost of extra communication overhead from the master node to worker nodes, and can act as one of the major bottlenecks in the overall time for computation. There has been significant recent interest in devising approaches to minimize this communication overhead. One approach is to provision for extra storage at the computing nodes. The other emerging approach is to leverage coded communication to minimize the overall communication overhead. The focus of this work is to understand the fundamental tradeoff between the amount of storage and the communication overhead for distributed data shuffling. In this paper, we first present an information theoretic formulation for the data shuffling problem, accounting for the underlying problem parameters (number of workers, $K$ , number of data points, $N$ , and available storage, and $S$ per node). We then present an information theoretic lower bound on the communication overhead for data shuffling as a function of these parameters. We next present a novel coded communication scheme and show that the resulting communication overhead of the proposed scheme is within a multiplicative factor of at most $\frac {K}{K-1}$ from the lower bound (which is upper bounded by 2 for $K\geq 2$). Furthermore, we present new results towards closing this gap through a novel coded communication scheme, which we call the aligned coded shuffling. This scheme is inspired by the ideas of coded shuffling and interference alignment. In particular, we show that the aligned scheme achieves the optimal storage vs communication trade-off for $K < 5$ , and further reduces the maximum multiplicative gap down to $\frac {K-\frac {1}{3}}{K-1}$ , for $K\geq 5$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One central theme in quantum error-correction is to construct quantum codes that have a relatively large minimum distance. In this paper, we first present a construction of classical linear codes based on certain classes of polynomials. Through these classical linear codes, we are able to obtain some new quantum codes. It turns out that some of the quantum codes exhibited here have better parameters than the ones available in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ovoids in ${\mathrm {PG}}(3, {\mathrm {GF}}(q))$ have been an interesting topic in coding theory, combinatorics, and finite geometry for a long time. So far only two families of ovoids are known. The first is the elliptic quadrics and the second is the Tits ovoids. It is known that an ovoid in ${\mathrm {PG}}(3, {\mathrm {GF}}(q))$ corresponds to a $[q^{2}+1, 4, q^{2}-q]$ code over ${\mathrm {GF}}(q)$ , which is called an ovoid code. The objectives of this paper are to develop the general theories of subfield codes and to study the subfield codes of the two families of ovoid codes. The dimensions, minimum weights, and the weight distributions of the subfield codes of the elliptic quadric codes and Tits ovoid codes are settled. The parameters of the duals of these subfield codes are also studied. Some of the codes presented in this paper are optimal, and some are distance-optimal. The parameters of the subfield codes are new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, self-dual MDS codes have attracted a lot of attention due to theoretical interest and practical importance. Similar to self-dual MDS codes, self-dual near MDS (NMDS for short) codes have nice structures as well. From both theoretical and practical points of view, it is natural to study self-dual NMDS codes. Although there has been lots of work on NMDS codes in literature, little is known for self-dual NMDS codes. It seems more challenging to construct self-dual NMDS codes than self-dual MDS codes. The only work on construction of self-dual NMDS codes shows existence of $q$ -ary self-dual NMDS codes of length $q-1$ for odd prime power $q$ or length up to 16 for some small primes $q$ with $q\le 197$. In this paper, we make use of properties of elliptic curves to construct self-dual NMDS codes. It turns out that, as long as $2|q$ and $n$ is even with $4\le n\le q+\lfloor 2\sqrt {q}\rfloor -2$ , one can construct a self-dual NMDS code of length $n$ over $ {\mathbb {F}}_{q}$. Furthermore, for odd prime power $q$ , there exists a self-dual NMDS code of length $n$ over $ {\mathbb {F}}_{q}$ if $q\ge 4^{n+3}\times (n+3)^{2}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cages, defined as regular graphs with minimum number of nodes for a given girth, are well-studied in graph theory. Trapping sets are graphical structures responsible for error floor of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, and are well investigated in coding theory. In this paper, we make connections between cages and trapping sets. In particular, starting from a cage (or a modified cage), we construct a trapping set in multiple steps. Based on the connection between cages and trapping sets, we then use the available results in graph theory on cages and derive tight upper bounds on the size of the smallest trapping sets for variable-regular LDPC codes with a given variable degree and girth. The derived upper bounds in many cases meet the best known lower bounds and thus provide the actual size of the smallest trapping sets. Considering that non-zero codewords are a special case of trapping sets, we also derive tight upper bounds on the minimum weight of such codewords, i.e., the minimum distance, of variable-regular LDPC codes as a function of variable degree and girth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrete polymatroids are the multi-set analogue of matroids. In this paper, we explore the connections among linear network coding, linear index coding, and representable discrete polymatroids. We consider the vector linear solutions of networks over a field \mathbb Fq , with possibly different message and edge vector dimensions, which are referred to as linear fractional solutions. It is well known that a scalar linear solution over \mathbb Fq exists for a network if and only if the network is matroidal with respect to a matroid representable over \mathbb Fq . We define a discrete polymatroidal network and show that a linear fractional solution over a field \mathbb Fq exists for a network if and only if the network is discrete polymatroidal with respect to a discrete polymatroid representable over \mathbb Fq . An algorithm to construct the networks starting from certain class of discrete polymatroids is provided. Every representation over \mathbb Fq for the discrete polymatroid, results in a linear fractional solution over \mathbb Fq for the constructed network. Next, we consider the index coding problem, which involves a sender, which generates a set of messages X=\x1,x2,\dotso xk\ , and a set of receivers \mathcal R , which demand messages. A receiver R \in \mathcal R is specified by the tuple $(x,H)$ , where x \in X$ is the message demanded by R$ and is the side information possessed by $R$ . We first show that a linear solution to an index coding problem exists if and only if there exists a representable discrete polymatroid, satisfying certain conditions, which are determined by the index coding problem considered. Rouayheb et al. showed that the problem of finding a multi-linear representation for a matroid can be reduced to finding a perfect linear index coding solution for an index coding problem obtained from that matroid. The multi-linear representation of a matroid can be viewed as a special case of representation of an appropriate discrete polymatroid. We generalize the result of Rouayheb et al., by showing that the problem of finding a representation for a discrete polymatroid can be reduced to finding a perfect linear index coding solution for an index coding problem obtained from that discrete polymatroid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 1973, Gallager proved that the random-coding bound is exponentially tight for the random code ensemble at all rates, even below expurgation. This result explained that the random-coding exponent does not achieve the expurgation exponent due to the properties of the random ensemble, irrespective of the utilized bounding technique. It has been conjectured that this same behavior holds true for a random ensemble of linear codes. This conjecture is proved in this paper. In addition, it is shown that this property extends to Poltyrev’s random-coding exponent for a random ensemble of lattices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main problem of constant-dimension subspace coding is to determine the maximal possible size ${\mathbf{A}}_{q}(n,d,k)$ of a set of $k$ -dimensional subspaces in ${\mathbf{F}}_{q}^{n}$ such that the subspace distance satisfies $d(U,V) \geq d$ for any two different subspaces $U$ and $V$ in this set. In this paper, we give a direct construction of constant-dimension subspace codes from two parallel versions of maximum rank-distance codes. The problem about the sizes of our constructed constant-dimension subspace codes is transformed into finding a suitable sufficient condition to restrict number of the roots of $L_{1}(L_{2}(x))-x$ where $L_{1}$ and $L_{2}$ are $q$ -polynomials over the extension field ${\mathbf{F}}_{q^{n}}$. New lower bounds for ${\mathbf{A}}_{q}(4k,2k,2k)$ , ${\mathbf{A}}_{q}(4k+2,2k,2k+1)$ , and ${\mathbf{A}}_{q}(4k+2,2(k-1),2k+1)$ are presented. Many new constant-dimension subspace codes better than previously best known codes with small parameters are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For non-binary codes the Elias bound is a good upper bound for the asymptotic information rate at low-relative minimum distance, whereas the Plotkin bound is better at high-relative minimum distance. In this paper, we obtain a hybrid of these bounds, which improves both. This in turn is based on the anticode bound, which is a hybrid of the Hamming and Singleton bounds and improves both bounds. The question of convexity of the asymptotic rate function is an important open question. We conjecture a much weaker form of the convexity, and we show that our bounds follow immediately if we assume the conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Johnson-type upper bound on the maximum size of a code of length n , distance d=2w-1 , and constant composition \overline w is \lfloor \dfrac \vphantom R^.nw1\rfloor , where w is the total weight and w_{1} is the largest component of {\overline {w}} . Recently, Chee et al. proved that this upper bound can be achieved for all constant-composition codes of sufficiently large lengths. Let Nccc({\overline {w}}) be the smallest such length. The determination of Nccc({\overline {w}}) is trivial for binary codes. This paper provides a lower bound on Nccc({\overline {w}}) , which is shown to be tight for all ternary and quaternary codes by giving new combinatorial constructions. Consequently, by the refining method, we determine the values of Nccc({\overline {w}}) , for all $q$ -ary constant-composition codes, provided that 3w_{1}\geq w with finite possible exceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We define a variable-length code having the property that no (non-empty) prefix of each its codeword is a suffix of any other one, and vice versa. This kind of code can be seen as an extension of two well-known codes in the literature, called, respectively, fix-free code and non-overlapping code. In this paper we present constructive algorithms for such codes and some numerical results about their cardinality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Codes over Galois rings have been studied extensively during the last three decades. Negacyclic codes over \mathop \mathrm GR\nolimits (2^a,m) of length 2^s have been characterized: the ring \mathcal R2(a,m,-1)= {\mathrm{ GR}}(2^{a},m)[x]/\langle x^{2^{s}}+1\rangle is a chain ring. Furthermore, these results have been generalized to \lambda -constacyclic codes for any unit \lambda of the form 4z-1 , . In this paper, we study more general cases and investigate all cases, where {\mathcal{ R}}_{p}(a,m,\gamma) = {\mathrm{ GR}}(p^{a},m)[x]/\langle x^{p^{s}}-\gamma \rangle is a chain ring. In particular, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the ring {\mathcal{ R}}_{p}(a,m,\gamma) to be a chain ring are obtained. In addition, by using this structure we investigate all \gamma -constacyclic codes over \mathop {\mathrm {GR}}\nolimits (p^{a},m) when {\mathcal{ R}}_{p}(a,m,\gamma)$ is a chain ring. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of self-orthogonal and self-dual \gamma$ -constacyclic codes are also provided. Among others, for any prime p$ , the structure of is used to establish the Hamming and homogeneous distances of $\gamma$ -constacyclic codes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Write-once memory (WOM) is a storage device consisting of $q$ -ary cells that can only increase their value. A WOM code is a coding scheme that allows writing multiple times to the memory without decreasing the levels of the cells. In the conventional model, it is assumed that the encoder can read the memory state before encoding, while the decoder reads only the memory state after encoding. However, there are three more models in this setup, which depend on whether the encoder and the decoder are informed or uninformed with the previous state of the memory. These four models were first introduced by Wolf et al., where they extensively studied the WOM capacity in these models for the binary case. In the non-binary setup, only the model, in which the encoder is informed and the decoder is not, was studied by Fu and Vinck. In this paper, we first present constructions of WOM codes in the models where the encoder is uninformed with the memory state (that is, the encoder cannot read the memory prior to encoding). We then study the capacity regions and maximum sum-rates of non-binary WOM codes for all four models. We extend the results by Wolf et al. and show that the capacity regions for the models in which the encoder is informed and the decoder is informed or uninformed in both the $\epsilon $ -error and the zero-error cases are all identical. We also find the $\epsilon $ -error capacity region; in this case, the encoder is uninformed and the decoder is informed and show that, in contrary to the binary case, it is a proper subset of the capacity region in the first two models. Several more results on the maximum sum-rate are presented as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caching is often used in content delivery networks as a mechanism for reducing network traffic. Recently, the technique of coded caching was introduced whereby coding in the caches and coded transmission signals from the central server were considered. Prior results in this area demonstrate that carefully designing the placement of content in the caches and designing appropriate coded delivery signals from the server allow for a system where the delivery rates can be significantly smaller than conventional schemes. However, matching upper and lower bounds on the transmission rate have not yet been obtained. In this paper, we derive tighter lower bounds on the coded caching rate than were known previously. We demonstrate that this problem can equivalently be posed as a combinatorial problem of optimally labeling the leaves of a directed tree. Our proposed labeling algorithm allows for significantly improved lower bounds on the coded caching rate. Furthermore, we study certain structural properties of our algorithm that allow us to analytically quantify improvements on the rate lower bound for general values of the problem parameters. This allows us to obtain a multiplicative gap of at most four between the achievable rate and our lower bound. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we solve the open problems raised in [8] and present some examples to illustrate the obtained results. Moreover, we work out the diophantine problem by Shi and Wang and then give the sufficient conditions for the nonexistence of two-Lee weight projective codes over \mathbb Z4 with type 4^k12^{k2} . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For a (single-source) multicast network, the size of a base field is the most known and studied algebraic identity that is involved in characterizing its linear solvability over the base field. In this paper, we design a new class \mathcal N of multicast networks and obtain an explicit formula for the linear solvability of these networks, which involves the associated coset numbers of a multiplicative subgroup in a base field. The concise formula turns out to be the first that matches the topological structure of a multicast network and algebraic identities of a field other than size. It further facilitates us to unveil infinitely many new multicast networks linearly solvable over GF( q ) but not over GF( q' ) with q < q' , based on a subgroup order criterion. In particular: 1) for every k\geq 2 ) but not over GF( 2^{2k+1} ) and 2) for arbitrary distinct primes p and p' , there are infinitely many k and k' ) but not over GF( p'^k' ) with p^k < p'^k' . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Projective Reed–Muller codes were introduced by Lachaud in 1988 and their dimension and minimum distance were determined by Serre and Sørensen in 1991. In coding theory, one is also interested in the higher Hamming weights, to study the code performance. Yet, not many values of the higher Hamming weights are known for these codes, not even the second lowest weight (also known as the next-to-minimal weight) is completely determined. In this paper, we determine all the values of the next-to-minimal weight for the binary projective Reed–Muller codes, which we show to be equal to the next-to-minimal weight of Reed–Muller codes in most, but not all, cases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MDS codes and self-dual codes are important families of classical codes in coding theory. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate MDS self-dual codes. The existence of MDS self-dual codes over finite field ${\mathbb F}_{q}$ is competely solved for $q$ is even. In the literature, there are many known constructions of MDS self-dual codes for $q$ is odd. In this paper, we present a unified approach on the existence of MDS self-dual codes with concise statements and simplified proof. It is illustrated that some of known results can also be stated in this framework. Furthermore, we can obtain some new MDS self-dual codes, especially for the case when $q$ is not a square. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An involution over finite fields is a permutation polynomial whose inverse is itself. Owing to this property, involutions over finite fields have been widely used in applications, such as cryptography and coding theory. Following the idea by Wang to characterize the involutory behavior of the generalized cyclotomic mappings, this paper gives a more concise criterion for $x^{r}h(x^{s})\in {\mathbb F} _{q}[x]$ being involutions over the finite field ${\mathbb F}_{q}$ , where $r\geq 1$ and $s\,|\, (q-1)$. By using this criterion, we propose a general method to construct involutions of the form $x^{r}h(x^{s})$ over ${\mathbb F}_{q}$ from given involutions over some subgroups of ${\mathbb F}_{q}^{*}$ by solving congruent and linear equations over finite fields. Then, many classes of explicit involutions of the form $x^{r}h(x^{s})$ over ${\mathbb F}_{q}$ are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies an almost-lossless source-channel coding scheme in which source messages are assigned to different classes and encoded with a channel code that depends on the class index. The code performance is analyzed by means of random-coding error exponents and validated by simulation of a low-complexity implementation using existing source and channel codes. While each class code can be seen as a concatenation of a source code and a channel code, the overall performance improves on that of separate source-channel coding and approaches that of joint source-channel coding when the number of classes increases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we develop efficient decoders for non-binary low-density parity-check codes using the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). We apply ADMM to two decoding problems. The first problem is linear programming (LP) decoding. In order to develop an efficient algorithm, we focus on non-binary codes in fields of characteristic two. This allows us to transform each constraint in \mathbb F2^{m} to a set of constraints in \mathbb F2 that has a factor graph representation. Applying ADMM to the LP decoding problem results in two types of non-trivial sub-routines. The first type requires us to solve an unconstrained quadratic program. We solve this problem efficiently by leveraging new results obtained from studying the above factor graphs. The second type requires Euclidean projections onto polytopes that are studied in the literature. Such projections can be solved efficiently using off-the-shelf techniques, which scale linearly in the dimension of the vector to project. ADMM LP decoding scales linearly with block length, linearly with check degree, and quadratically with field size. The second problem we consider is a penalized LP decoding problem. This problem is obtained by incorporating a penalty term into the LP decoding objective. The purpose of the penalty term is to make non-integer solutions (pseudocodewords) more expensive and hence to improve decoding performance. The ADMM algorithm for the penalized LP problem requires Euclidean projection onto a polytope formed by embedding the constraints specified by the non-binary single parity-check code, which can be solved by applying the ADMM technique to the resulting quadratic program. Empirically, this decoder achieves a much reduced error rate than LP decoding at low signal-to-noise ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the linear network coding problem for erasure broadcast channel with user feedback. An innovative linear network code is shown to be uniformly optimal for the system. In general, determining the existence of innovative packets is proved to be NP-complete. When the finite field size is larger than the number of users, innovative packets always exist and the problem of finding an innovative encoding vector with smallest Hamming weight is considered. The corresponding decision problem is shown to be NP-complete. Optimal and approximate network coding algorithms for maximizing the sparsity of encoding vectors are designed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constacyclic codes which generalize the classical cyclic codes have played important roles in recent constructions of many new quantum maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. However, the mathematical mechanism may not have been fully understood. In this paper, we use pseudo-cyclic codes, which is a further generalization of constacyclic codes, to construct the quantum MDS codes. We can not only provide a unified explanation of many previous constructions, but also produce some new quantum MDS codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A likelihood encoder is studied in the context of lossy source compression. The analysis of the likelihood encoder is based on the soft-covering lemma. It is demonstrated that the use of a likelihood encoder together with the soft-covering lemma yields simple achievability proofs for classical source coding problems. The cases of the point-to-point rate-distortion function, the rate-distortion function with side information at the decoder (i.e., the Wyner–Ziv problem), and the multi-terminal source coding inner bound (i.e., the Berger–Tung problem) are examined in this paper. Furthermore, a non-asymptotic analysis is used for the point-to-point case to examine the upper bound on the excess distortion provided by this method. The likelihood encoder is also related to a recent alternative technique using the properties of random binning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to recent applications to communications over powerlines, multilevel flash memories, and block ciphers, permutation codes have received a lot of attention from both coding and mathematical communities. One of the benchmarks for good permutation codes is the Gilbert–Varshamov bound. Although there have been several constructions of permutation codes, the Gilbert–Varshamov bound still remains to be the best asymptotical lower bound except for a recent improvement in the case of constant minimum distance. In this paper, we present an algebraic construction of permutation codes from rational function fields, and it turns out that, for a prime number $n$ of a symbol length, this class of permutation codes improves the Gilbert–Varshamov bound by a factor n$ asymptotically for a minimum distance d$ with . Furthermore, for a constant minimum distance $d$ , we improve the Gilbert–Varshamov bound by a factor $n$ as well as the recent one given by Gao et al. by a factor $n/\log n$ asymptotically for all sufficiently large $n$ . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A q -ary code of length n , size M , and minimum distance d code. An (n,q^{k},n-k+1)_{q} code is called a maximum distance separable (MDS) code. In this paper, some MDS codes over small alphabets are classified. It is shown that every (k+d-1,q^{k},d)_{q} code with k\geq 3 , d \geq 3 , is equivalent to a linear code with the same parameters. This implies that the (6,5^4,3)5 code and the (n,7^{n-2},3)7 MDS codes for n\in \6,7,8\ are unique. The classification of one-error-correcting 8-ary MDS codes is also finished; there are 14, 8, 4, and 4 equivalence classes of (n,8^n-2,3)8 codes for $n=6,7,8$ , and 9, respectively. One of the equivalence classes of perfect (9,8^{7},3)_{8} codes corresponds to the Hamming code and the other three are nonlinear codes for which there exists no previously known construction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BCH codes are an interesting type of cyclic codes and have wide applications in communication and storage systems. Generally, it is very hard to determine the minimum distances of BCH codes. In this paper, we determine the weight distributions of two classes of primitive BCH codes $\mathcal C_{(q, m, \delta _{2})}$ and $\mathcal C_{(q, m, \delta _{3})}$ and their extended codes, which solve two problems proposed by Ding et al. It is shown that the extended codes $\overline {\mathcal C}_{(q, m, \delta _{2})}$ have four nonzero weights. We also employ the Hartmann-Tzeng bound to present the minimum distance of the dual code $\mathcal C_{(q, m, \delta _{2})}^\perp $ for $q \ge 5$. Inspired by the idea, we then determine the dimensions of a class of cyclic codes and give lower bounds on their minimum distances, which is greatly improved comparing with the BCH bound. Some optimal codes are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suppose $M$ records are replicated in $N$ servers (each storing all $M$ records), a user wants to privately retrieve one record by accessing the servers such that the identity of the retrieved record is secret against any up to $T$ servers. A scheme designed for this purpose is called a $T$ -private information retrieval (PIR) scheme. In practice, capacity-achieving and small sub-packetization are both desired for PIR schemes, because the former implies the highest download rate and the latter means simple realization. Meanwhile, sub-packetization is the key technique for achieving capacity. In this paper, we characterize the optimal sub-packetization for linear capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR schemes. First, a lower bound on the sub-packetization $L$ for linear capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR schemes is proved, i.e., $L\geq dn^{M-1}$ , where $d={\mathrm{ gcd}}(N,T)$ and $n=N/d$. Then, for general values of $M$ and $N>T\geq 1$ , a linear capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR scheme with sub-packetization $dn^{M-1}$ is designed. Comparing with the first capacity-achieving $T$ -PIR scheme given by Sun and Jafar in 2016, our scheme reduces the sub-packetization from $N^{M}$ to the optimal and further reduces the field size by a factor of $Nd^{M-2}$. [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]

Write-once memory (WOM) is a storage medium with memory elements, called cells, which can take on \(q\) levels. Each cell is initially in level 0 and can only increase its level. A \(t\) -write WOM code is a coding scheme, which allows one to store \(t\) messages to the WOM such that on consecutive writes every cell’s level does not decrease. The sum-rate of the WOM code, which is the ratio between the total amount of information written in the \(t\) writes and number of memory cells, is bounded by \(\log (t+1)\) . Our main contribution in this paper is a construction of binary three-write WOM codes with sum-rate approaching 1.885 for sufficiently large number of cells, whereas the upper bound is 2. This improves upon a recent construction of sum-rate 1.809. A key ingredient in our construction is a recent capacity achieving construction of two-write WOM codes, which uses the so-called Wozencraft ensemble of linear codes. In our construction, we encode information in the first and second write in a way that leaves a large number (roughly half) of the cells nonprogrammed. This allows us to use the above two-write construction in order to invoke a third write to the memory. We also give specific constructions of nonbinary two-write WOM codes and multiple writes, which give better sum-rate than the currently best known ones. In the construction of these codes, we build upon previous nonbinary constructions and show how tools such symbols relabeling can help in achieving high sum-rates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The problem of simultaneously generating a secret key (SK) and private key (PK) pair among three terminals via public discussion is investigated. In this problem, each terminal observes a component of correlated sources. All three terminals are required to generate the common SK to be concealed from an eavesdropper that has access to the public discussion, while two designated terminals are required to generate an extra PK to be concealed from both the eavesdropper and the remaining terminal. An outer bound on the SK-PK capacity region was established by Ye and Narayan, and was shown to be achievable for a special case. In this paper, the SK-PK capacity region is established in general by developing schemes to achieve the outer bound for the remaining two cases. The main technique lies in the novel design of a random binning-joint decoding scheme that achieves the existing outer bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We establish the rate region of an extended Gray–Wyner system (EGW) for 2-DMS $(X,Y)$ with two additional decoders having complementary causal side information. We show that the 5-D rate region of the EGW system is equivalent to the 3-D mutual information region consisting of the set of all triples of the form $(I(X;U),\,I(Y;U),\,I(X,Y;U))$ for some $p_{U|X,Y}$. This correspondence greatly simplifies the exploration of the the extreme points of the rate region. In addition to the operationally significant extreme points of the original Gray–Wyner rate region, which include Wyner’s common information, Gács-Körner common information, and the information bottleneck, the extreme points of the rate region for the EGW system also include the Körner graph entropy, the privacy funnel and excess functional information, as well as three new quantities of potential interest. We further show that projections of the mutual information region yield the rate regions for many settings involving a two discrete memoryless source (2-DMS), including lossless source coding with causal side information, distributed channel synthesis, and lossless source coding with a helper. To further motivate the mutual information region itself, we draw analogies between set operations and its extreme points. This allows us to find random variables that can be considered as intersection, difference, and symmetric difference of two random variables. Finally, we establish the rate regions for two related setups to the EGW system, namely, the noncausal EGW system and the lossy EGW system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]