Semidefinite programming, binary codes and a graph coloring problem

Experts in information theory have long been interested in the maximal size, A(n, d), of a binary error-correcting code of length n and minimum distance d, The problem of determining A(n, d) involves both the construction of good codes and the search for good upper bounds. For quite some time now, Delsarte\u27s linear programming approach has been the dominant approach to obtaining the strongest general purpose upper bounds on the efficiency of error-correcting codes. From 1973 forward, the linear programming bound found many applications, but there were few significant theoretical advances until Schrijver proposed a new code upper bound via semidefinite programming in 2003. Using the Terwilliger algebra, a recently introduced extension of the Bose-Mesner algebra, Schrijver formulated a new SDP strengthening of the LP approach. In this project we look at the dual solutions of the semidefinite programming bound for binary error-correcting codes. We explore the combinatorial meaning of these variables for small n and d, such as n = 4 and d = 2. To obtain information like this, we wrote a computer program with both Matlab and CVX modules to get solution of our primal SDP formulation. Our program efficiently generates the primal solutions with corresponding constraints for any n and d. We also wrote a program in C++ to parse the output of the primal SDP problem, and another Matlab script to generate the dual SDP problem, which could be used in assigning combinatorial meaning to the values given in the dual optimal solution. Our code not only computes both the primal and dual optimal variable values, but allows the researcher to display them in meaningful ways and to explore their relationship and dependence on arameters. These values are expected to be useful for later study of the combinatorial meaning of such solutions

Problems on q-Analogs in Coding Theory

The interest in $q$-analogs of codes and designs has been increased in the last few years as a consequence of their new application in error-correction for random network coding. There are many interesting theoretical, algebraic, and combinatorial coding problems concerning these q-analogs which remained unsolved. The first goal of this paper is to make a short summary of the large amount of research which was done in the area mainly in the last few years and to provide most of the relevant references. The second goal of this paper is to present one hundred open questions and problems for future research, whose solution will advance the knowledge in this area. The third goal of this paper is to present and start some directions in solving some of these problems.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0805.3528 by other author

Combinatorial Alphabet-Dependent Bounds for Locally Recoverable Codes

Locally recoverable (LRC) codes have recently been a focus point of research in coding theory due to their theoretical appeal and applications in distributed storage systems. In an LRC code, any erased symbol of a codeword can be recovered by accessing only a small number of other symbols. For LRC codes over a small alphabet (such as binary), the optimal rate-distance trade-off is unknown. We present several new combinatorial bounds on LRC codes including the locality-aware sphere packing and Plotkin bounds. We also develop an approach to linear programming (LP) bounds on LRC codes. The resulting LP bound gives better estimates in examples than the other upper bounds known in the literature. Further, we provide the tightest known upper bound on the rate of linear LRC codes with a given relative distance, an improvement over the previous best known bounds.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Linear programming bounds for codes in Grassmannian spaces

We introduce a linear programming method to obtain bounds on the cardinality of codes in Grassmannian spaces for the chordal distance. We obtain explicit bounds, and an asymptotic bound that improves on the Hamming bound. Our approach generalizes the approach originally developed by P. Delsarte and Kabatianski-Levenshtein for compact two-point homogeneous spaces.Comment: 35 pages, 1 figur