A module minimization approach to Gabidulin decoding via interpolation

We focus on iterative interpolation-based decoding of Gabidulin codes and present an algorithm that computes a minimal basis for an interpolation module. We extend existing results for Reed-Solomon codes in showing that this minimal basis gives rise to a parametrization of elements in the module that lead to all Gabidulin decoding solutions that are at a fixed distance from the received word. Our module-theoretic approach strengthens the link between Gabidulin decoding and Reed-Solomon decoding, thus providing a basis for further work into Gabidulin list decoding

Equivalence and Characterizations of Linear Rank-Metric Codes Based on Invariants

We show that the sequence of dimensions of the linear spaces, generated by a given rank-metric code together with itself under several applications of a field automorphism, is an invariant for the whole equivalence class of the code. The same property is proven for the sequence of dimensions of the intersections of itself under several applications of a field automorphism. These invariants give rise to easily computable criteria to check if two codes are inequivalent. We derive some concrete values and bounds for these dimension sequences for some known families of rank-metric codes, namely Gabidulin and (generalized) twisted Gabidulin codes. We then derive conditions on the length of the codes with respect to the field extension degree, such that codes from different families cannot be equivalent. Furthermore, we derive upper and lower bounds on the number of equivalence classes of Gabidulin codes and twisted Gabidulin codes, improving a result of Schmidt and Zhou for a wider range of parameters. In the end we use the aforementioned sequences to determine a characterization result for Gabidulin codes.Comment: 37 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables, extended version of arXiv:1905.1132

Densities of Codes of Various Linearity Degrees in Translation-Invariant Metric Spaces

We investigate the asymptotic density of error-correcting codes with good distance properties and prescribed linearity degree, including sublinear and nonlinear codes. We focus on the general setting of finite translation-invariant metric spaces, and then specialize our results to the Hamming metric, to the rank metric, and to the sum-rank metric. Our results show that the asymptotic density of codes heavily depends on the imposed linearity degree and the chosen metric