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General error locator polynomials were introduced in 2005 as an alternative decoding for cyclic codes. We now present a conjecture on their sparsity, which would imply polynomial-time decoding for all cyclic codes. A general result on the explicit form of the general error locator polynomial for all cyclic codes is given, along with several results for specific code families, providing evidence to our conjecture. From these, a theoretical justification of the sparsity of general error locator polynomials is obtained for all binary cyclic codes with $t\leq 2$ and $n<105$ , as well as for $t=3$ and $n<63$ , except for some cases where the conjectured sparsity is proved by a computer check. Moreover, we summarize all related results, previously published, and we show how they provide further evidence to our conjecture. Finally, we discuss the link between our conjecture and the complexity of bounded-distance decoding of the cyclic codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: General error locator polynomials are polynomials able to decode any correctable syndrome for a given linear code. Such polynomials are known to exist for all cyclic codes and for a large class of linear codes. We provide some decoding techniques for affine-variety codes using some multidimensional extensions of general error locator polynomials. We prove the existence of such polynomials for any correctable affine-variety code and hence for any linear code. We propose two main different approaches, that depend on the underlying geometry. We compute some interesting cases, including Hermitian codes. To prove our coding theory results, we develop a theory for special classes of zero-dimensional ideals, that can be considered generalizations of stratified ideals. Our improvement with respect to stratified ideals is twofold: we generalize from one variable to many variables and we introduce points with multiplicities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we show that a recently proposed algorithm for decoding cyclic codes may be applied efficiently to all binary cyclic codes with t ⩽ 2 and n < 63. This is accomplished by providing structure theorems for the codes in this range and classifying the relevant cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]