Partition-balanced families of codes and asymptotic enumeration in coding theory

Eimear Byrne (Corresponding author), Alberto Ravagnani (Corresponding author)

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We introduce the class of partition-balanced families of codes, and show how to exploit their combinatorial invariants to obtain upper and lower bounds on the number of codes that have a prescribed property. In particular, we derive precise asymptotic estimates on the density functions of several classes of codes that are extremal with respect to minimum distance, covering radius, and maximality. The techniques developed in this paper apply to various distance functions, including the Hamming and the rank metric distances. Applications of our results show that, unlike the Fqm -linear MRD codes, the Fq-linear MRD codes are not dense in the family of codes of the same dimension. More precisely, we show that the density of Fq-linear MRD codes in Fq n×m in the set of all matrix codes of the same dimension is asymptotically at most 1/2, both as q→+∞ and as m→+∞. We also prove that MDS and Fqm -linear MRD codes are dense in the family of maximal codes. Although there does not exist a direct analogue of the redundancy bound for the covering radius of Fq-linear rank metric codes, we show that a similar bound is satisfied by a uniformly random matrix code with high probability. In particular, we prove that codes meeting this bound are dense. Finally, we compute the average weight distribution of linear codes in the rank metric, and other parameters that generalize the total weight of a linear code.

Original languageEnglish
Article number105169
Number of pages39
JournalJournal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A
Volume171
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2020
Externally publishedYes

Funding

The author was partially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation through grant No. P2NEP2_168527 and by the Marie Curie Research Grants Scheme, grant No. 740880.

FundersFunder number
Marie Skłodowska‐Curie
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme740880
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungP2NEP2_168527

    Keywords

    • Asymptotic enumeration
    • Density function
    • Error-correcting code
    • Hamming metric
    • MDS code
    • MRD code
    • Partition-balanced family
    • Rank metric

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