Subspace subcodes of Reed-Solomon codes

We introduce a class of nonlinear cyclic error-correcting codes, which we call subspace subcodes of Reed-Solomon (SSRS) codes. An SSRS code is a subset of a parent Reed-Solomon (RS) code consisting of the RS codewords whose components all lie in a fixed ν-dimensional vector subspace S of GF (2m). SSRS codes are constructed using properties of the Galois field GF(2m). They are not linear over the field GF(2ν), which does not come into play, but rather are Abelian group codes over S. However, they are linear over GF(2), and the symbol-wise cyclic shift of any codeword is also a codeword. Our main result is an explicit but complicated formula for the dimension of an SSRS code. It implies a simple lower bound, which gives the true value of the dimension for most, though not all, subspaces. We also prove several important duality properties. We present some numerical examples, which show, among other things, that (1) SSRS codes can have a higher dimension than comparable subfield subcodes of RS codes, so that even if GF(2ν) is a subfield of GF(2m), it may not be the best ν-dimensional subspace for constructing SSRS codes; and (2) many high-rate SSRS codes have a larger dimension than any previously known code with the same values of n, d, and q, including algebraic-geometry codes. These examples suggest that high-rate SSRS codes are promising candidates to replace Reed-Solomon codes in high-performance transmission and storage systems

On Primitive BCH Codes with Unequal Error Protection Capabilities

Presents a class of binary primitive BCH codes that have unequal-error-protection (UEP) capabilities. The authors use a previous result on the span of their minimum weight vectors to show that binary primitive BCH codes, containing second-order punctured Reed-Muller (RM) codes of the same minimum distance, are binary-cyclic UEP codes. The values of the error correction levels for this class of binary LUEP codes are estimated

A new class of codes for Boolean masking of cryptographic computations

We introduce a new class of rate one-half binary codes: {\bf complementary information set codes.} A binary linear code of length $2n$ and dimension $n$ is called a complementary information set code (CIS code for short) if it has two disjoint information sets. This class of codes contains self-dual codes as a subclass. It is connected to graph correlation immune Boolean functions of use in the security of hardware implementations of cryptographic primitives. Such codes permit to improve the cost of masking cryptographic algorithms against side channel attacks. In this paper we investigate this new class of codes: we give optimal or best known CIS codes of length $<132.$ We derive general constructions based on cyclic codes and on double circulant codes. We derive a Varshamov-Gilbert bound for long CIS codes, and show that they can all be classified in small lengths $\le 12$ by the building up construction. Some nonlinear permutations are constructed by using $\Z_4$-codes, based on the notion of dual distance of an unrestricted code.Comment: 19 pages. IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, to appea