Homogeneous metric and matrix product codes over finite commutative principal ideal rings

In this paper, a necessary and sufficient condition for the homogeneous distance on an arbitrary finite commutative principal ideal ring to be a metric is obtained. We completely characterize the lower bound of homogeneous distances of matrix product codes over any finite principal ideal ring where the homogeneous distance is a metric. Furthermore, the minimum homogeneous distances of the duals of such codes are also explicitly investigated.