Covering Radius of the (n−3)(n-3)-rd Order Reed-Muller Code in the Set of Resilient Functions

In this paper, we continue the study of the covering radius in the set of resilient functions, which has been defined by Kurosawa. This new concept is meaningful to cryptography especially in the context of the new class of algebraic attacks on stream ciphers proposed by Courtois and Meier at Eurocrypt 2003 and Courtois at Crypto 2003. In order to resist such attacks the combining Boolean function should be at high distance from lower degree functions. Using a result from coding theory on the covering radius of $(n-3)$-rd Reed-Muller codes, we establish exact values of the the covering radius of $RM(n-3,n)$ in the set of $1$-resilient Boolean functions of $n$ variables, when $\lfloor n/2 \rfloor = 1 \mod\;2$. We also improve the lower bounds for covering radius of the Reed-Muller codes $RM(r,n)$ in the set of $t$-resilient functions, where $\lceil r/2 \rceil = 0 \mod\;2$, $t \leq n-r-2$ and $n\geq r+3$

On the Peak-to-Mean Envelope Power Ratio of Phase-Shifted Binary Codes

The peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR) of a code employed in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems can be reduced by permuting its coordinates and by rotating each coordinate by a fixed phase shift. Motivated by some previous designs of phase shifts using suboptimal methods, the following question is considered in this paper. For a given binary code, how much PMEPR reduction can be achieved when the phase shifts are taken from a 2^h-ary phase-shift keying (2^h-PSK) constellation? A lower bound on the achievable PMEPR is established, which is related to the covering radius of the binary code. Generally speaking, the achievable region of the PMEPR shrinks as the covering radius of the binary code decreases. The bound is then applied to some well understood codes, including nonredundant BPSK signaling, BCH codes and their duals, Reed-Muller codes, and convolutional codes. It is demonstrated that most (presumably not optimal) phase-shift designs from the literature attain or approach our bound.Comment: minor revisions, accepted for IEEE Trans. Commun

New Set of Codes for the Maximum-Likelihood Decoding Problem

The maximum-likelihood decoding problem is known to be NP-hard for general linear and Reed-Solomon codes. In this paper, we introduce the notion of A-covered codes, that is, codes that can be decoded through a polynomial time algorithm A whose decoding bound is beyond the covering radius. For these codes, we show that the maximum-likelihood decoding problem is reachable in polynomial time in the code parameters. Focusing on bi- nary BCH codes, we were able to find several examples of A-covered codes, including two codes for which the maximum-likelihood decoding problem can be solved in quasi-quadratic time.Comment: in Yet Another Conference on Cryptography, Porquerolle : France (2010