Linear Codes from Some 2-Designs

A classical method of constructing a linear code over \gf(q) with a $t$-design is to use the incidence matrix of the $t$-design as a generator matrix over \gf(q) of the code. This approach has been extensively investigated in the literature. In this paper, a different method of constructing linear codes using specific classes of $2$-designs is studied, and linear codes with a few weights are obtained from almost difference sets, difference sets, and a type of $2$-designs associated to semibent functions. Two families of the codes obtained in this paper are optimal. The linear codes presented in this paper have applications in secret sharing and authentication schemes, in addition to their applications in consumer electronics, communication and data storage systems. A coding-theory approach to the characterisation of highly nonlinear Boolean functions is presented

On the weight distributions of several classes of cyclic codes from APN monomials

Let $m\geq 3$ be an odd integer and $p$ be an odd prime. % with $p-1=2^rh$, where $h$ is an odd integer. In this paper, many classes of three-weight cyclic codes over $\mathbb{F}_{p}$ are presented via an examination of the condition for the cyclic codes $\mathcal{C}_{(1,d)}$ and $\mathcal{C}_{(1,e)}$, which have parity-check polynomials $m_1(x)m_d(x)$ and $m_1(x)m_e(x)$ respectively, to have the same weight distribution, where $m_i(x)$ is the minimal polynomial of $\pi^{-i}$ over $\mathbb{F}_{p}$ for a primitive element $\pi$ of $\mathbb{F}_{p^m}$. %For $p=3$, the duals of five classes of the proposed cyclic codes are optimal in the sense that they meet certain bounds on linear codes. Furthermore, for $p\equiv 3 \pmod{4}$ and positive integers $e$ such that there exist integers $k$ with $\gcd(m,k)=1$ and $\tau\in\{0,1,\cdots, m-1\}$ satisfying $(p^k+1)\cdot e\equiv 2 p^{\tau}\pmod{p^m-1}$, the value distributions of the two exponential sums T(a,b)=\sum\limits_{x\in \mathbb{F}_{p^m}}\omega^{\Tr(ax+bx^e)} and S(a,b,c)=\sum\limits_{x\in \mathbb{F}_{p^m}}\omega^{\Tr(ax+bx^e+cx^s)}, where $s=(p^m-1)/2$, are settled. As an application, the value distribution of $S(a,b,c)$ is utilized to investigate the weight distribution of the cyclic codes $\mathcal{C}_{(1,e,s)}$ with parity-check polynomial $m_1(x)m_e(x)m_s(x)$. In the case of $p=3$ and even $e$ satisfying the above condition, the duals of the cyclic codes $\mathcal{C}_{(1,e,s)}$ have the optimal minimum distance