Quasi-cyclic and generalized quasi-cyclic codes and uniqueness of their generators.

In this paper, we use a novel approach to describe generator polynomials of quasi-cyclic (QC) and generalized QC (GQC) codes over finite fields. Our study of QC- and GQC-codes will be general and not only restricted to one-generator codes. We prove that generator polynomials of QC-codes and GQC-codes are unique. Further, we use our results to obtain an expression for the dimensions of QC-codes and GQC-codes. As an application of our construction of these codes, we obtain many optimal linear codes over finite fields GF (2) , GF (3) , GF (4) and GF (5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]