7 research outputs found
Succinct Representation of Codes with Applications to Testing
Motivated by questions in property testing, we search for linear
error-correcting codes that have the "single local orbit" property: i.e., they
are specified by a single local constraint and its translations under the
symmetry group of the code. We show that the dual of every "sparse" binary code
whose coordinates are indexed by elements of F_{2^n} for prime n, and whose
symmetry group includes the group of non-singular affine transformations of
F_{2^n} has the single local orbit property. (A code is said to be "sparse" if
it contains polynomially many codewords in its block length.) In particular
this class includes the dual-BCH codes for whose duals (i.e., for BCH codes)
simple bases were not known. Our result gives the first short (O(n)-bit, as
opposed to the natural exp(n)-bit) description of a low-weight basis for BCH
codes. The interest in the "single local orbit" property comes from the recent
result of Kaufman and Sudan (STOC 2008) that shows that the duals of codes that
have the single local orbit property under the affine symmetry group are
locally testable. When combined with our main result, this shows that all
sparse affine-invariant codes over the coordinates F_{2^n} for prime n are
locally testable. If, in addition to n being prime, if 2^n-1 is also prime
(i.e., 2^n-1 is a Mersenne prime), then we get that every sparse cyclic code
also has the single local orbit. In particular this implies that BCH codes of
Mersenne prime length are generated by a single low-weight codeword and its
cyclic shifts
Symmetries in algebraic Property Testing
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-100).Modern computational tasks often involve large amounts of data, and efficiency is a very desirable feature of such algorithms. Local algorithms are especially attractive, since they can imply global properties by only inspecting a small window into the data. In Property Testing, a local algorithm should perform the task of distinguishing objects satisfying a given property from objects that require many modifications in order to satisfy the property. A special place in Property Testing is held by algebraic properties: they are some of the first properties to be tested, and have been heavily used in the PCP and LTC literature. We focus on conditions under which algebraic properties are testable, following the general goal of providing a more unified treatment of these properties. In particular, we explore the notion of symmetry in relation to testing, a direction initiated by Kaufman and Sudan. We investigate the interplay between local testing, symmetry and dual structure in linear codes, by showing both positive and negative results. On the negative side, we exhibit a counterexample to a conjecture proposed by Alon, Kaufman, Krivelevich, Litsyn, and Ron aimed at providing general sufficient conditions for testing. We show that a single codeword of small weight in the dual family together with the property of being invariant under a 2-transitive group of permutations do not necessarily imply testing. On the positive side, we exhibit a large class of codes whose duals possess a strong structural property ('the single orbit property'). Namely, they can be specified by a single codeword of small weight and the group of invariances of the code. Hence we show that sparsity and invariance under the affine group of permutations are sufficient conditions for a notion of very structured testing. These findings also reveal a new characterization of the extensively studied BCH codes. As a by-product, we obtain a more explicit description of structured tests for the special family of BCH codes of design distance 5.by Elena Grigorescu.Ph.D