Numerical Techniques for Finding the Distances of Quantum Codes

We survey the existing techniques for calculating code distances of classical codes and apply these techniques to generic quantum codes. For classical and quantum LDPC codes, we also present a new linked-cluster technique. It reduces complexity exponent of all existing deterministic techniques designed for codes with small relative distances (which include all known families of quantum LDPC codes), and also surpasses the probabilistic technique for sufficiently high code rates.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Proceedings of ISIT 2014 - IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Honolul

Improved linear programming decoding of LDPC codes and bounds on the minimum and fractional distance

We examine LDPC codes decoded using linear programming (LP). Four contributions to the LP framework are presented. First, a new method of tightening the LP relaxation, and thus improving the LP decoder, is proposed. Second, we present an algorithm which calculates a lower bound on the minimum distance of a specific code. This algorithm exhibits complexity which scales quadratically with the block length. Third, we propose a method to obtain a tight lower bound on the fractional distance, also with quadratic complexity, and thus less than previously-existing methods. Finally, we show how the fundamental LP polytope for generalized LDPC codes and nonbinary LDPC codes can be obtained.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Mathematical Programming Decoding of Binary Linear Codes: Theory and Algorithms

Mathematical programming is a branch of applied mathematics and has recently been used to derive new decoding approaches, challenging established but often heuristic algorithms based on iterative message passing. Concepts from mathematical programming used in the context of decoding include linear, integer, and nonlinear programming, network flows, notions of duality as well as matroid and polyhedral theory. This survey article reviews and categorizes decoding methods based on mathematical programming approaches for binary linear codes over binary-input memoryless symmetric channels.Comment: 17 pages, submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Published July 201

LEDAkem: a post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism based on QC-LDPC codes

This work presents a new code-based key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) called LEDAkem. It is built on the Niederreiter cryptosystem and relies on quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check codes as secret codes, providing high decoding speeds and compact keypairs. LEDAkem uses ephemeral keys to foil known statistical attacks, and takes advantage of a new decoding algorithm that provides faster decoding than the classical bit-flipping decoder commonly adopted in this kind of systems. The main attacks against LEDAkem are investigated, taking into account quantum speedups. Some instances of LEDAkem are designed to achieve different security levels against classical and quantum computers. Some performance figures obtained through an efficient C99 implementation of LEDAkem are provided.Comment: 21 pages, 3 table