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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]

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]

Two general constructions of linear codes with functions over finite fields have been extensively studied in the literature. The first one is given by C(ƒ) = {Tr(aƒ(x) + bx)x∈Fqm*: a, b ∈ Fqm}, where q is a prime power, Fqm* = Fqm \ {0}, Tr is the trace function from Fqm to Fq, and ƒ(x) is a function from Fqm to Fqm with ƒ(0) = 0. Almost bent functions, quadratic functions and some monomials on F2m were used in the first construction, and many families of binary linear codes with few weights were obtained in the literature. This paper studies some punctured codes of these binary codes. Several families of binary linear codes with few weights and new parameters are obtained in this paper. Several families of distance-optimal binary linear codes with new parameters are also produced in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The puncturing and shortening techniques are two important approaches to constructing new linear codes from old ones. In the past 70 years, a lot of progress on the puncturing technique has been made, and many works on punctured linear codes have been done. Many families of linear codes with interesting parameters have been obtained with the puncturing technique. However, little research on the shortening technique has been done and there are only a handful references on shortened linear codes. The first objective of this paper is to prove some general theory for shortened linear codes. The second objective is to study some shortened codes of the Hamming codes, Simplex codes, some Reed-Muller codes, and ovoid codes. Eleven families of optimal shortened codes over finite fields are presented in this paper. As a byproduct, five infinite families of 2-designs are also constructed from some of the shortened codes presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, subfield codes of geometric codes over large finite fields ${\mathrm {GF}}(q)$ with dimension 3 and 4 were studied and distance-optimal subfield codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(p)$ were obtained, where $q=p^{m}$. The key idea for obtaining very good subfield codes over small fields is to choose very good linear codes over an extension field with small dimension. This paper first presents a general construction of $[q+1, 2, q]$ MDS codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(q)$ , and then studies the subfield codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(p)$ of some of the $[q+1, 2,q]$ MDS codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(q)$. Two families of dimension-optimal codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(p)$ are obtained, and several families of nearly optimal codes over ${\mathrm {GF}}(p)$ are produced. Several open problems are also proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear codes generated by component functions of perfect nonlinear (PN for short) and almost perfect nonlinear (APN for short) functions and the first-order Reed-Muller codes have been an object of intensive study in coding theory. The objective of this paper is to investigate some binary shortened codes of two families of linear codes from APN functions and some $p$ -ary shortened codes associated with PN functions. The weight distributions of these shortened codes and the parameters of their duals are determined. The parameters of these binary codes and $p$ -ary codes are flexible. Many of the codes presented in this paper are optimal or almost optimal. The results of this paper show that the shortening technique is very promising for constructing good codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a family of $[{q}^{2}-1, 4, {q}^{2}-{q}-2]$ cyclic codes over ${\mathbb F}_{{q}}$ meeting the Griesmer bound is presented. Their duals are $[{q}^{2}-1,{q}^{2}-5,4]$ almost MDS codes and are optimal with respect to the sphere-packing bound. The ${q}_{0}$ -ary subfield codes of this family of cyclic codes are also investigated, where ${q}_{0}$ is any prime power such that q is power of ${q}_{0}$. Some of the subfield codes are optimal and some have the best known parameters. It is shown that the subfield codes are equivalent to a family of primitive BCH codes and thus the parameters of the BCH codes are solved. The duals of the subfield codes are also optimal with respect to the sphere-packing bound. A family of $[{q}^{2}, 4, {q}^{2}-{q}-1]$ linear codes over ${\mathbb F}_{{q}}$ meeting the Griesmer bound is presented. Their duals are $[{q}^{2},{q}^{2}-4,4]$ almost MDS codes and are optimal with respect to the sphere-packing bound. The ${q}_{0}$ -ary subfield codes of this family of linear codes are also investigated, where ${q}_{0}$ is any prime power such that q is power of ${q}_{0}$. Five infinite families of 2-designs are also constructed with three families of linear codes of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information retrieval in associative memories was studied in a recent paper by Yaakobi and Bruck (2012). Associations between memory entries give us the t -neighbourhood of an entry. In their model, an information unit is retrieved from the memory with the aid of input clues, which are chosen from a reference set. In this paper, we consider the situation where the information unit is found unambiguously using the associated t -neighbourhoods of the input clues. A varying number of input clues are allowed, but a limit mu on the maximum number of them is imposed. Of course, we would like mu to be as small as possible. We consider the problem over the binary Hamming space \mathbb F^n and focus on the minimum of mu , denoted by $\nu (n;t)$ . Using linear reference sets, we show that $\nu (n;2) \leq 5$ for any $n \geq 9$ . We also give infinite families of reference sets, which provide good bounds on $\nu (n;t)$ for $t=3$ . In addition, efficient methods are given to obtain bounds on $\nu (n;t)$ for any $t$ from known reference sets. We also discuss the applications of this model to the Levenshtein’s sequence reconstruction problem and the sensor network monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-orthogonal codes are an important type of linear codes due to their wide applications in communication and cryptography. The Euclidean (or Hermitian) hull of a linear code is defined to be the intersection of the code and its Euclidean (or Hermitian) dual. It is clear that the hull is self-orthogonal. The main goal of this paper is to obtain self-orthogonal codes by investigating the hulls. Let $\mathcal {C}_{(r,r^{m}-1,\delta,b)}$ be the primitive BCH code over $\mathbb {F}_{r}$ of length $r^{m}-1$ with designed distance $\delta $ , where $\mathbb {F}_{r}$ is the finite field of order $r$. In this paper, we will present Euclidean (or Hermitian) self-orthogonal codes and determine their parameters by investigating the Euclidean (or Hermitian) hulls of some primitive BCH codes. Several sufficient and necessary conditions for primitive BCH codes with large Hermitian hulls are developed by presenting lower and upper bounds on their designed distances. Furthermore, some Hermitian self-orthogonal codes are proposed via the hulls of BCH codes and their parameters are also investigated. In addition, we determine the dimensions of the code $\mathcal {C}_{(r,r^{2}-1,\delta,1)}$ and its hull in both Hermitian and Euclidean cases for $2 \le \delta \le r^{2}-1$. We also present two sufficient and necessary conditions on designed distances such that the hull has the largest dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The binary quadratic-residue codes and the punctured Reed-Muller codes ${\mathcal {R}}_{2}((m-1)/2, m))$ are two families of binary cyclic codes with parameters $[n, (n+1)/2, d \geq \sqrt {n}]$. These two families of binary cyclic codes are interesting partly due to the fact that their minimum distances have a square-root bound. The objective of this paper is to construct two families of binary cyclic codes of length $2^{m}-1$ and dimension near $2^{m-1}$ with good minimum distances. When $m \geq 3$ is odd, the codes become a family of duadic codes with parameters $[2^{m}-1, 2^{m-1}, d]$ , where $d \geq 2^{(m-1)/2}+1$ if $m \equiv 3 \pmod {4}$ and $d \geq 2^{(m-1)/2}+3$ if $m \equiv 1 \pmod {4}$. The two families of binary cyclic codes contain some optimal binary cyclic codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to their applications in data communication and storage, linear codes also have nice applications in combinatorics and cryptography. Minimal linear codes, a special type of linear codes, are preferred in secret sharing. In this paper, a necessary and sufficient condition for a binary linear code to be minimal is derived. This condition enables us to obtain three infinite families of minimal binary linear codes with $w_{\min }/w_{\max } \leq 1/2$ from a generic construction, where $w_{\min }$ and $w_{\max }$ , respectively, denote the minimum and maximum nonzero weights in a code. The weight distributions of all these minimal binary linear codes are also determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study an important specialization of the general problem of broadcasting on directed acyclic graphs, namely, that of broadcasting on two-dimensional (2D) regular grids. Consider an infinite directed acyclic graph with the form of a 2D regular grid, which has a single source vertex $X$ at layer 0, and $k + 1$ vertices at layer $k \geq 1$ , which are at a distance of $k$ from $X$. Every vertex of the 2D regular grid has outdegree 2, the vertices at the boundary have indegree 1, and all other non-source vertices have indegree 2. At time 0, $X$ is given a uniform random bit. At time $k \geq 1$ , each vertex in layer $k$ receives transmitted bits from its parents in layer $k-1$ , where the bits pass through independent binary symmetric channels with common crossover probability $\delta \in \left({0,\frac {1}{2}}\right)$ during the process of transmission. Then, each vertex at layer $k$ with indegree 2 combines its two input bits using a common deterministic Boolean processing function to produce a single output bit at the vertex. The objective is to recover $X$ with probability of error better than $\frac {1}{2}$ from all vertices at layer $k$ as $k \rightarrow \infty $. Besides their natural interpretation in the context of communication networks, such broadcasting processes can be construed as one-dimensional (1D) probabilistic cellular automata, or discrete-time statistical mechanical spin-flip systems on 1D lattices, with boundary conditions that limit the number of sites at each time $k$ to $k+1$. Inspired by the literature surrounding the “positive rates conjecture” for 1D probabilistic cellular automata, we conjecture that it is impossible to propagate information in a 2D regular grid regardless of the noise level $\delta $ and the choice of common Boolean processing function. In this paper, we make considerable progress towards establishing this conjecture, and prove using ideas from percolation and coding theory that recovery of $X$ is impossible for any $\delta \in \left({0,\frac {1}{2}}\right)$ provided that all vertices with indegree 2 use either AND or XOR for their processing functions. Furthermore, we propose a detailed and general martingale-based approach that establishes the impossibility of recovering $X$ for any $\delta \in \left({0,\frac {1}{2}}\right)$ when all NAND processing functions are used if certain structured supermartingales can be rigorously constructed. We also provide strong numerical evidence for the existence of these supermartingales by computing several explicit examples for different values of $\delta $ via linear programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combinatorial designs are closely related to linear codes. Recently, some near MDS codes were employed to construct $t$ -designs by Ding and Tang, which settles the question as to whether there exists an infinite family of near MDS codes holding an infinite family of $t$ -designs for $t \geq 2$. This paper is devoted to the construction of infinite families of 3-designs and 2-designs from special equations over finite fields. First, we present an infinite family of almost MDS codes over ${\mathrm{ GF}}(p^{m})$ holding an infinite family of 3-designs. We then provide an infinite family of almost MDS codes over ${\mathrm{ GF}}(p^{m})$ holding an infinite family of 2-designs for any field ${\mathrm{ GF}}(q)$. In particular, some of these almost MDS codes are near MDS. Second, we present an infinite family of near MDS codes over ${\mathrm{ GF}}(2^{m})$ holding an infinite family of 3-designs by considering the number of roots of a special linearized polynomial. Compared to previous constructions of 3-designs or 2-designs from linear codes, the parameters of some of our designs are new and flexible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boolean functions, coding theory and $t$ -designs have close connections and interesting interplay. A standard approach to constructing $t$ -designs is the use of linear codes with certain regularity. The Assmus-Mattson Theorem and the automorphism groups are two ways for proving that a code has sufficient regularity for supporting $t$ -designs. However, some linear codes hold $t$ -designs, although they do not satisfy the conditions in the Assmus-Mattson Theorem and do not admit a $t$ -transitive or $t$ -homogeneous group as a subgroup of their automorphisms. The major objective of this paper is to develop a theory for explaining such codes and obtaining such new codes and hence new $t$ -designs. To this end, a general theory for punctured and shortened codes of linear codes supporting $t$ -designs is established, a generalized Assmus-Mattson theorem is developed, and a link between 2-designs and differentially $\delta $ -uniform functions and 2-designs is built. With these general results, binary codes with new parameters and explicit weight distributions are obtained, new 2-designs and Steiner system $S(2, 4, 2^{n})$ are produced in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bent functions, or equivalently, Hadamard difference sets in the elementary Abelian group (${\mathrm {GF}}(2^{2m}), $ +), have been employed to construct symmetric and quasi-symmetric designs having the symmetric difference property. The main objective of this paper is to use bent vectorial functions for a construction of a two-parameter family of binary linear codes that do not satisfy the conditions of the Assmus–Mattson theorem, but nevertheless hold 2-designs. A new coding-theoretic characterization of bent vectorial functions is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimal linear codes have significant applications in secret sharing schemes and secure two-party computation. When they are defined over finite fields, those codes have been intensively studied, especially in recent years, but they have been firstly partially characterized by Ashikhmin and Barg since 1998. Next, they were completely characterized in 2018 by Ding, Heng, and Zhou in terms of the minimum and maximum nonzero weights in the corresponding codes. Since then, many construction methods for minimal linear codes over finite fields throughout algebraic and geometric approaches have been proposed in the literature. In particular, the algebraic approach gives rise to minimal codes from (cryptographic) functions. Linear codes over finite fields have been expanded into the collection of acceptable alphabets for codes and study codes over finite commutative rings. A natural way to extend the known results available in the literature is to consider minimal linear codes over commutative rings with unity. In extending coding theory to codes over rings, several essential principles must be considered. Particularly extending the minimality property from finite fields to rings and creating such codes is not simple. Such an extension offers more flexibility in the construction of minimal codes. The present article investigates one-dimensional minimal linear codes over the rings $\mathbb {Z}_{p^{n}}$ (where $p$ is a prime) and $\mathbb {Z}_{p^{m}q^{n}}$ (where $p < q$ are distinct primes and $m\leq n$). Our ultimate objective is to characterize such codes’ minimality and design minimal linear codes over the considered rings. Given our objective, we first introduced the notion of minimal codes over (commutative) rings and succeeded in deriving simple characterization of one-dimensional minimal linear codes over the underlying rings mentioned above. Our new algebraic approach allows designing new minimal linear codes. Almost minimal codes over rings are also presented. To the best of our knowledge, the present paper offers a wide variety of minimal codes over (commutative) rings for the first time. Novel perspectives and developments in this direction are expected in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a special subclass of cyclic codes, BCH codes have wide applications in communication and storage systems. A BCH code of length $n$ over $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ is always relative to an $n$ -th primitive root of unity $\beta $ in an extension field of $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ , and is called a dually-BCH code if its dual is also a BCH code relative to the same $\beta $. The question as to whether a BCH code is a dually-BCH code is in general very hard to answer. In this paper, an answer to this question for primitive narrow-sense BCH codes and projective narrow-sense ternary BCH codes is given. Sufficient and necessary conditions in terms of the designed distances $\delta $ will be presented to ensure that these BCH codes are dually-BCH codes. In addition, the parameters of the primitive narrow-sense BCH codes and their dual codes are investigated. Some lower bounds on minimum distances of the dual codes of primitive and projective narrow-sense BCH codes are developed. Especially for binary primitive narrow-sense BCH codes, the new bounds on the minimum distances of the dual codes improve the classical Sidel’nikov bound, and are also better than the Carlitz and Uchiyama bound for large designed distances $\delta $. The question as to what subclasses of cyclic codes are BCH codes is also answered to some extent. As a byproduct, the parameters of some subclasses of cyclic codes are also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimal linear codes are in one-to-one correspondence with special types of blocking sets of projective spaces over a finite field, which are called strong or cutting blocking sets. Minimal linear codes have been studied since decades but their tight connection with cutting blocking sets of finite projective spaces was unfolded only in the past few years, and it has not been fully exploited yet. In this paper we apply finite geometric and probabilistic arguments to contribute to the field of minimal codes. We prove an upper bound on the minimal length of minimal codes of dimension $k$ over the $q$ -element Galois field which is linear in both $q$ and $k$ , hence improve the previous superlinear bounds. This result determines the minimal length up to a small constant factor. We also improve the lower and upper bounds on the size of so called higgledy-piggledy line sets in projective spaces and apply these results to present improved bounds on the size of covering codes and saturating sets in projective spaces as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyclic codes are an interesting type of linear codes and have applications in communication and storage systems due to their efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, three types of generalized cyclotomy of order two are described and three classes of cyclic codes of length n1n2 and dimension (n1n2+1)/2 are presented and analyzed, where n1 and n2 are two distinct primes. Bounds on their minimum odd-like weight are also proved. Some of the codes presented in this paper are among the best cyclic codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Private information retrieval (PIR) protocols allow a user to retrieve entries of a database without revealing the index of the desired item. Information-theoretical privacy can be achieved by the use of several servers and specific retrieval algorithms. Most known PIR protocols focus on decreasing the number of bits exchanged between the client and the server(s) during the retrieval process. On another side, Fazeli et al. introduced so-called PIR codes in order to reduce the storage overhead on the servers. However, few works address the issue of the computation complexity of the servers. In this paper, we show that a specific encoding of the database yields PIR protocols with reasonable communication complexity, low storage overhead, and optimal computational complexity for the servers. This encoding is based on incidence matrices of transversal designs, from which a natural and efficient recovering algorithm is derived. We also present several instances for our construction, which make use of finite geometries and orthogonal arrays. We finally give a generalization of our main construction in order to resist collusions of servers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there were several papers on finding good linear codes. Various methods were introduced to make good linear codes. In this paper, we give a simple iterative algorithm to make good linear codes. Using our algorithm we construct 86 codes which improve the minimum distance of previously best known linear codes for fixed parameters n, k. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An error-erasure channel is a simple noise model that introduces both errors and erasures. While the two types of errors can be corrected simultaneously with error-correcting codes, it is also known that any linear code allows for first correcting errors and then erasures in two-step decoding. In particular, a carefully designed parity-check matrix not only allows for separating erasures from errors but also makes it possible to efficiently correct erasures. The separating redundancy of a linear code is the number of parity-check equations in a smallest parity-check matrix that has the required property for this error-erasure separation. In a sense, it is a parameter of a linear code that represents the minimum overhead for efficiently separating erasures from errors. While several bounds on separating redundancy are known, there still remains a wide gap between upper and lower bounds except for a few limited cases. In this paper, using probabilistic combinatorics and design theory, we improve both upper and lower bounds on separating redundancy. We also show a relation between parity-check matrices for error-erasure separation and special matrices, called X-codes, for data compaction circuits in VLSI testing. This leads to an exponentially improved bound on the size of an optimal X-code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first study in detail the relationship between minimal linear codes and cutting blocking sets, recently introduced by Bonini and Borello, and then completely characterize minimal linear codes as cutting blocking sets. As a direct result, minimal projective codes of dimension 3 and t-fold blocking sets with t ≥ 2 in projective planes are identical objects. Some bounds on the parameters of minimal codes are derived from this characterization. Using this new link between minimal codes and blocking sets, we also present new general primary and secondary constructions of minimal linear codes. As a result, infinite families of minimal linear codes not satisfying the Aschikhmin-Barg’s condition are obtained. In addition to this, open problems on the parameters and the weight distributions of some generated linear codes are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a subclass of linear codes, cyclic codes have applications in consumer electronics, data storage systems, and communication systems as they have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, five families of three-weight ternary cyclic codes whose duals have two zeros are presented. The weight distributions of the five families of cyclic codes are settled. The duals of two families of the cyclic codes are optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is known that the empirical spectral distribution of random matrices obtained from linear codes of increasing length converges to the well-known Marchenko-Pastur law, if the Hamming distance of the dual codes is at least 5. In this paper, we prove that the convergence rate in probability is at least of the order $n^{-1/4}$ where $n$ is the length of the code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-orthogonal codes are an interesting type of linear codes due to their wide applications in communication and cryptography. It is known that self-orthogonal codes are often used to construct quantum error-correcting codes, which can protect quantum information in quantum computations and quantum communications. Let $\mathcal C$ be an $[n, k]$ cyclic code over $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ , where $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ is the finite field of order $q$. The hull of $\mathcal C$ is defined to be the intersection of the code and its dual. In this paper, we will employ the defining sets of cyclic codes to present two general characterizations of the hulls that have dimension $k-1$ or $k^\perp -1$ , where $k^\perp $ is the dimension of the dual code $\mathcal C^\perp $. Several sufficient and necessary conditions for primitive and projective BCH codes to have $(k-1)$ -dimensional (or $(k^\perp -1)$ -dimensional) hulls are also developed by presenting lower and upper bounds on their designed distances. Furthermore, several classes of self-orthogonal codes are proposed via the hulls of BCH codes and their parameters are also investigated. The dimensions and minimum distances of some self-orthogonal codes are determined explicitly. In addition, several optimal codes are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An $[{n}, {k}, {n}-{k}+1]$ linear code is called an MDS code. An $[{n}, {k}, {n}-{k}]$ linear code is said to be almost maximum distance separable (almost MDS or AMDS for short). A code is said to be near maximum distance separable (near MDS or NMDS for short) if the code and its dual code both are almost maximum distance separable. The first near MDS code was the [11, 6, 5] ternary Golay code discovered in 1949 by Golay. This ternary code holds 4-designs, and its extended code holds a Steiner system ${S}(5, 6, 12)$ with the largest strength known. In the past 70 years, sporadic near MDS codes holding t-designs were discovered and a lot of infinite families of near MDS codes over finite fields were constructed. However, the question as to whether there is an infinite family of near MDS codes holding an infinite family of t-designs for $ {t}\geq 2$ remains open for 70 years. This paper settles this long-standing problem by presenting an infinite family of near MDS codes over $ {GF}(3^{ {s}})$ holding an infinite family of 3-designs and an infinite family of near MDS codes over $ {GF}(2^{2 {s}})$ holding an infinite family of 2-designs. The subfield subcodes of these two families of codes are also studied, and are shown to be dimension-optimal or distance-optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The binary Hamming codes with parameters $[{2^{m}-1, 2^{m}-1-m, 3}]$ are perfect. Their extended codes have parameters $[{2^{m}, 2^{m}-1-m, 4}]$ and are distance-optimal. The first objective of this paper is to construct a class of binary linear codes with parameters $[{2^{m+s}+2^{s}-2^{m},2^{m+s}+2^{s}-2^{m}-2m-2,4}]$ , which have better information rates than the class of extended binary Hamming codes, and are also distance-optimal. The second objective is to construct a class of distance-optimal binary codes with parameters $[{2^{m}+2, 2^{m}-2m, 6}]$. Both classes of binary linear codes have new parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining the minimum distance of a linear code is one of the most important problems in algorithmic coding theory. The exact version of the problem was shown to be NP-complete by Vardy. The gap version of the problem was shown to be NP-hard for any constant factor under a randomized reduction in an earlier work. It was shown in the same paper that the minimum distance problem is not approximable in randomized polynomial time to the factor 2^\log^1-\epsilonn unless NP\subseteq RTIME(2^polylog(n)). In this paper, we derandomize the reduction and thus prove that there is no deterministic polynomial time algorithm to approximate the minimum distance to any constant factor unless P=NP. We also prove that the minimum distance is not approximable in deterministic polynomial time to the factor 2^\log^1-\epsilonn unless NP\subseteq DTIME(2^polylog(n)). As the main technical contribution, for any constant 2/3 < \rho < 1, we present a deterministic algorithm that given a positive integer s, runs in time poly(s) and constructs a code \cal C of length poly(s) with an explicit Hamming ball of radius \rho d(\cal C), such that the projection at the first s coordinates sends the codewords in the ball surjectively onto a linear subspace of dimension s, where d(\cal C) denotes the minimum distance of \cal C. The codes are obtained by concatenating Reed–Solomon codes with Hadamard codes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cyclic codes are a subclass of linear codes and have wide applications in consumer electronics, data storage systems, and communication systems as they have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, the two-prime sequence is employed to construct several classes of cyclic codes over GF(q). Lower bounds on the minimum weight of these cyclic codes are developed. Some of the codes obtained are optimal or almost optimal. The p-ranks of the twin-prime difference sets and a class of almost difference sets are computed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cyclic codes with two zeros and their dual codes have been a subject of study for many years. However, their weight distributions are known only for a few cases. In this paper, the weight distributions of the duals of the cyclic codes with two zeros are settled for a few more cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimal linear codes have significant applications in secret sharing schemes and secure two-party computation. There are several methods to construct linear codes, one of which is based on functions over finite fields. Recently, many construction methods for linear codes from functions have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we generalize the recent construction methods given by Tang et al. in [IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 62(3), 1166-1176, 2016] to weakly regular plateaued functions over finite fields of odd characteristic. We first construct three-weight linear codes from weakly regular plateaued functions based on the second generic construction and then determine their weight distributions. We also give a punctured version and subcode of each constructed code. We note that they may be (almost) optimal codes and can be directly employed to obtain (democratic) secret sharing schemes, which have diverse applications in the industry. We next observe that the constructed codes are minimal for almost all cases and finally describe the access structures of the secret sharing schemes based on their dual codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimal linear codes are a special subclass of linear codes and have significant applications in secret sharing and secure two-party computation. In this paper, we focus on constructing minimal linear codes with $\frac {w_{\min }}{w_{\max }}\leq \frac {p-1}{p}$ for any odd prime $p$ based on a generic construction of linear codes, where $w_{\min }$ and $w_{\max }$ denote the minimum and maximum nonzero weights in a code, respectively. First, we present two new infinite families of minimal linear codes with two or three weights by selecting suitable subcode of linear codes which are not minimal. Second, we also present an infinite family of minimal linear codes by employing partial spreads, which can be viewed as a generalization of the construction of Ding et al. In addition, we determine the weight distributions of all these minimal linear codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a class of exponential sums from some half quadratic binomials. The exponential sums are proven to be eleven-valued with maximal magnitude (1/2(q-\sqrt q)) except for the trivial value $q$ . As applications, first, we investigate the autocorrelation and cross-correlation distribution among the sequences in a sequence family. Second, we determine the weight distributions of several classes of linear codes. Some of the dual codes have minimum distance four, which are optimal with respect to the Hamming bound. Our results extend the result by Choi et al. and show that some correlation values in it do not occur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Quasi-uniform random vectors have probability distributions that are uniform over their projections. They are of fundamental interest because a linear information inequality is valid if and only if it is satisfied by all quasi-uniform random vectors. In this paper, we investigate properties of codes induced by quasi-uniform random vectors. We prove that quasi-uniform codes (which include linear and almost affine codes as special cases) are distance-invariant and that Greene's Theorem and the Critical Theorem of Crapo and Rota hold in the setting of quasi-uniform codes. We show that both theorems are essentially combinatorial but not algebraical in nature. Linear programming bounds proposed by Delsarte are extended for quasi-uniform codes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The projective special linear group ${\mathrm {PSL}}_{2}(n)$ is 2-transitive for all primes $n$ and 3-homogeneous for $n \equiv 3 \pmod {4}$ on the set $\{0,1, \ldots, n-1, \infty \}$. It is known that the extended odd-like quadratic residue codes are invariant under ${\mathrm {PSL}}_{2}(n)$. Hence, the extended quadratic residue codes hold an infinite family of 2-designs for primes $n \equiv 1 \pmod {4}$ , an infinite family of 3-designs for primes $n \equiv 3 \pmod {4}$. To construct more $t$ -designs with $t \in \{2, 3\}$ , one would search for other extended cyclic codes over finite fields that are invariant under the action of ${\mathrm {PSL}}_{2}(n)$. The objective of this paper is to prove that the extended quadratic residue binary codes are the only nontrivial extended binary cyclic codes that are invariant under ${\mathrm {PSL}}_{2}(n)$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A static (constant channel gains) real K-user interference channel is considered, where all interference (cross) channel gains are integers. For such channels, previous results demonstrate that the number of degrees of freedom is very sensitive to slight variations in the direct channel gains. In this paper, we derive an achievable rate region for such channels that is valid for finite SNR. At moderate values of SNR, the derived rate region is robust to slight variations in the direct channel gains. At asymptotic high SNR conditions, known results on the degrees of freedom are recovered. The new rate region is based on lattice interference alignment. The result is established via a new coding theorem for the two-user Gaussian multiple-access channel where both users use a single linear code. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The high repair bandwidth cost of (n,k) maximum distance separable (MDS) erasure codes has motivated a new class of codes that can reduce repair bandwidth over that of conventional MDS codes. In this paper, we address (n,k,d) exact repair MDS codes, which allow for any single failed node to be repaired exactly with access to any arbitrary set of d survivor nodes. We show the existence of exact repair MDS codes that achieve minimum repair bandwidth (matching the cut-set lower bound) for arbitrary admissible (n,k,d), i.e., k \leq d \leq n-1. Moreover, we extend our results to show the optimality of our codes for multiple-node failure scenarios in which an arbitrary set of r \leq n-k failed nodes needs to repaired. Our approach is based on asymptotic interference alignment proposed by Cadambe and Jafar. As a byproduct, we also characterize the capacity of a class of multisource nonmulticast networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, Tchamkerten and coworkers proposed a novel variation of the problem of joint synchronization and error correction. This paper considers a strengthened formulation that requires the decoder to estimate both the message and the location of the codeword exactly. Such a scheme allows for transmitting data bits in the synchronization phase of the communication, thereby improving bandwidth and energy efficiencies. It is shown that the capacity region remains unchanged under the exact synchronization requirement. Furthermore, asynchronous capacity can be achieved by universal (channel independent) codes. Comparisons with earlier results on another (delay compensated) definition of rate are made. The finite blocklength regime is investigated and it is demonstrated that even for moderate blocklengths, it is possible to construct capacity-achieving codes that tolerate exponential level of asynchronism and experience only a rather small loss in rate compared to the perfectly synchronized setting; in particular, the channel dispersion does not suffer any degradation due to asynchronism. For the binary symmetric channel, a translation (coset) of a good linear code is shown to achieve the capacity-synchronization tradeoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyclic codes with two zeros and their dual codes as a practically and theoretically interesting class of linear codes have been studied for many years and find many applications. The determination of the weight distributions of such codes is an open problem. Generally, the weight distributions of cyclic codes are difficult to determine. Utilizing a class of elliptic curves, this paper determines the weight distributions of dual codes of q-ary cyclic codes with two zeros for a few more cases, where q is an odd prime power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A subgroup permutation code is a set of permutations on n symbols with the property that its elements are closed under the operation of composition. In this paper, we give inapproximability results for the minimum and maximum weight problems of subgroup permutation codes under several well-known metrics. Based on previous works, we prove that under Hamming, Lee, Cayley, Kendall's tau, Ulam's, and \ell p distance metrics, 1) there is no polynomial-time 2^\log ^1-\epsilon n-approximation algorithm for the minimum weight problem for any constant \epsilon >0 unless NP\subseteq DTIME(2^ polylog(n)) (quasi-polynomial time), and 2) there is no polynomial-time r-approximation algorithm for the minimum weight problem for any constant r >1 unless P= NP. Under \ell \infty -metric, we prove that it is NP-hard to approximate the minimum weight problem within factor 2-\epsilon for any constant \epsilon >0. We also prove that for any constant \epsilon >0, it is NP-hard to approximate the maximum weight within ^p \!\!\! \sqrt 3\over 2-\epsilon under \ell p distance metric, and within 3\over 2-\epsilon under Hamming, Lee, Cayley, Kendall's tau, and Ulam's distance metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A write-once memory (WOM) is a storage device that consists of cells that can take on q values, with the added constraint that rewrites can only increase a cell's value. A length-n, t-write WOM-code is a coding scheme that allows t messages to be stored in n cells. If on the ith write we write one of Mi messages, then the rate of this write is the ratio of the number of written bits to the total number of cells, i.e., \log2Mi/n. The sum-rate of the WOM-code is the sum of all individual rates on all writes. A WOM-code is called a fixed-rate WOM-code if the rates on all writes are the same, and otherwise, it is called a variable-rate WOM-code. We address two different problems when analyzing the sum-rate of WOM-codes. In the first one, called the fixed-rate WOM-code problem, the sum-rate is analyzed over all fixed-rate WOM-codes, and in the second problem, called the unrestricted-rate WOM-code problem, the sum-rate is analyzed over all fixed-rate and variable-rate WOM-codes. In this paper, we first present a family of two-write WOM-codes. The construction is inspired by the coset coding scheme, which was used to construct multiple-write WOM-codes by Cohen and recently by Wu, in order to construct from each linear code a two-write WOM-code. This construction improves the best known sum-rates for the fixed- and unrestricted-rate WOM-code problems. We also show how to take advantage of two-write WOM-codes in order to construct codes for the Blackwell channel. The two-write construction is generalized for two-write WOM-codes with q levels per cell, which is used with ternary cells to construct three- and four-write binary WOM-codes. This construction is used recursively in order to generate a family of t-write WOM-codes for all t. A further generalization of these t-write WOM-codes yields additional families of efficient WOM-codes. Finally, we show a recursive method that uses the previously constructed WOM-codes in order to construct fixed-rate WOM-codes. We conclude and show that the WOM-codes constructed here outperform all previously known WOM-codes for 2\leqslant t\leqslant 10 for both the fixed- and unrestricted-rate WOM-code problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additive codes over GF(9) that are self-dual with respect to the Hermitian trace inner product have a natural application in quantum information theory, where they correspond to ternary quantum error-correcting codes. However, these codes have so far received far less interest from coding theorists than self-dual additive codes over GF(4), which correspond to binary quantum codes. Self-dual additive codes over GF(9) have been classified up to length 8, and in this paper we extend the complete classification to codes of lengths 9 and 10. The classification is obtained by using a new algorithm that combines two graph representations of self-dual additive codes. The search space is first reduced by the fact that every code can be mapped to a weighted graph, and a different graph is then introduced that transforms the problem of code equivalence into a problem of graph isomorphism. By an extension technique, we are able to classify all optimal codes of lengths 11 and 12. There are 56\,005\,876∼(11,3^11,5) codes and 6493∼(12,3^12,6) codes. We also find the smallest codes with trivial automorphism group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we show that if the dimension of an arbitrary algebraic geometry code over a finite field of even characteristic is slightly less than n/2-g with n being the length of the code and g being the genus of the base curve, then it is equivalent to an Euclidean self-orthogonal code. Previously, such results required a strong condition on the existence of a certain differential. We also show a similar result on Hermitian self-orthogonal algebraic geometry codes. As a consequence, we can apply our result to quantum codes and obtain some good quantum codes. In particular, we obtain a q-ary quantum [[q+1,1]]-MDS code for an even power q which is essential for quantum secret sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Group testing is a long studied problem in combinatorics: A small set of r ill people should be identified out of the whole (n people) by using only queries (tests) of the form “Does set X contain an ill human?” In this paper we provide an explicit construction of a testing scheme which is better (smaller) than any known explicit construction. This scheme has \Theta\left(\min[r^2 \ln n,n]\right) tests which is as many as the best nonexplicit schemes have. In our construction, we use a fact that may have a value by its own right: Linear error-correction codes with parameters [m,k,\delta m]_q meeting the Gilbert-Varshamov bound may be constructed quite efficiently, in \Theta\left(q^km\right) time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constant composition codes are codes where the frequency distribution of the elements in a codeword is the same for all codewords. In this paper, three classes of constant composition codes are constructed. These codes are subcodes of cyclic codes which have few weights occurring among the codewords. The new codes are excellent asymptotically compared to the previously best known constant composition codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A well-known conjecture of Golomb and Welch is that the only nontrivial perfect codes in the Lee and Manhattan metrics have length two or minimum distance three. This problem and related topics were subject for extensive research in the last 40 years. In this paper, two product constructions for perfect Lee codes and diameter perfect Lee codes are presented. These constructions yield a large number of nonlinear perfect codes and nonlinear diameter perfect codes in the Lee and Manhattan metrics. A short survey and other related problems on perfect codes in the Lee and Manhattan metrics are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]