An introduction to linear and cyclic codes

International audienceOur purpose is to recall some basic aspects about linear and cyclic codes. We first briefly describe the role of error-correcting codes in communication. To do this we introduce, with examples, the concept of linear codes and their parameters, in particular the Hamming distance. A fundamental subclass of linear codes is given by cyclic codes, that enjoy a very interesting algebraic structure. In fact, cyclic codes can be viewed as ideals in a residue classes ring of univariate polynomials. BCH codes are the most studied family of cyclic codes, for which some efficient decoding algorithms are known, as the method of Sugiyama

Eisenstein field BCH codes construction and decoding

First, we will go through the theory behind the Eisenstein field (EF) and its extension field. In contrast, we provide a detailed framework for building BCH codes over the EF in the second stage. BCH codes over the EF are decoded using the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm (BMA) in this article. We investigate the error-correcting capabilities of these codes and provide expressions for minimal distance. We provide researchers and engineers creating and implementing robust error-correcting codes for digital communication systems with detailed information on building, decoding and performance assessment