Hartmann--Tzeng bound and Skew Cyclic Codes of Designed Hamming Distance

The use of skew polynomial rings allows to endow linear codes with cyclic structures which are not cyclic in the classical (commutative) sense. Whenever these skew cyclic structures are carefully chosen, some control over the Hamming distance is gained, and it is possible to design efficient decoding algorithms. In this paper, we give a version of the Hartmann-Tzeng bound that works for a wide class of skew cyclic codes. We also provide a practical method for constructing them with designed distance. For skew BCH codes, which are covered by our constructions, we discuss decoding algorithms. Detailed examples illustrate both the theory as the constructive methods it supports.