We study orbit codes in the field extension ${mathbb F}_{q^n}$. First we show that the automorphism group of a cyclic orbit code is contained in the normalizer of the Singer subgroup if the orbit is generated by a subspace that is not contained in a proper subfield of ${mathbb F}_{q^n}$. We then generalize to orbits under the normalizer of the Singer subgroup. In that situation some exceptional cases arise and some open cases remain. Finally we characterize linear isometries between such codes.
The distance distribution of a code is the vector whose $i^text{th}$ entry is the number of pairs of codewords with distance $i$. We investigate the structure of the distance distribution for cyclic orbit codes, which are subspace codes generated by the action of $mathbb{F}_{q^n}^*$ on an $mathbb{F}_q$-subspace $U$ of $mathbb{F}_{q^n}$. We show that for optimal full-length orbit codes the distance distribution depends only on $q,,n$, and the dimension of $U$. For full-length orbit codes with lower minimum distance, we provide partial results towards a characterization of the distance distribution, especially in the case that any two codewords intersect in a space of dimension at most 2. Finally, we briefly address the distance distribution of a union of optimal full-length orbit codes.
We use a theorem of Chow (1949) on line-preserving bijections of Grassmannians to determine the automorphism group of Grassmann codes. Further, we analyze the automorphisms of the big cell of a Grassmannian and then use it to settle an open question of Beelen et al. (2010) concerning the permutation automorphism groups of affine Grassmann codes. Finally, we prove an analogue of Chows theorem for the case of Schubert divisors in Grassmannians and then use it to determine the automorphism group of linear codes associated to such Schubert divisors. In the course of this work, we also give an alternative short proof of MacWilliams theorem concerning the equivalence of linear codes and a characterization of maximal linear subspaces of Schubert divisors in Grassmannians.
In this paper, we make some progress towards a well-known conjecture on the minimum weights of binary cyclic codes with two primitive nonzeros. We also determine the Walsh spectrum of $Tr(x^d)$ over $F_{2^{m}}$ in the case where $m=2t$, $d=3+2^{t+1}$ and $gcd(d, 2^{m}-1)=1$.
The determination of weight distribution of cyclic codes involves evaluation of Gauss sums and exponential sums. Despite of some cases where a neat expression is available, the computation is generally rather complicated. In this note, we determine the weight distribution of a class of reducible cyclic codes whose dual codes may have arbitrarily many zeros. This goal is achieved by building an unexpected connection between the corresponding exponential sums and the spectrums of Hermitian forms graphs.
Neural decoders were introduced as a generalization of the classic Belief Propagation (BP) decoding algorithms, where the Trellis graph in the BP algorithm is viewed as a neural network, and the weights in the Trellis graph are optimized by training the neural network. In this work, we propose a novel neural decoder for cyclic codes by exploiting their cyclically invariant property. More precisely, we impose a shift invariant structure on the weights of our neural decoder so that any cyclic shift of inputs results in the same cyclic shift of outputs. Extensive simulations with BCH codes and punctured Reed-Muller (RM) codes show that our new decoder consistently outperforms previous neural decoders when decoding cyclic codes. Finally, we propose a list decoding procedure that can significantly reduce the decoding error probability for BCH codes and punctured RM codes. For certain high-rate codes, the gap between our list decoder and the Maximum Likelihood decoder is less than $0.1$dB. Code available at https://github.com/cyclicallyneuraldecoder/CyclicallyEquivariantNeuralDecoders