International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
Abstract
A linear code with few weights is a significant code family in coding theory. A linear code is considered self-orthogonal if contained within its dual code. Self-orthogonal codes have applications in linear complementary dual codes, quantum codes, etc. The construction of linear codes is an interesting research problem. There are various methods to construct linear codes, and one approach involves utilizing cryptographic functions defined over finite fields. The construction of linear codes (in particular, self-orthogonal codes) from functions has been studied in the literature. In this paper, we generalize the construction method given by
Heng et al. in [Des. Codes Cryptogr. 91(12), 2023] to weakly regular plateaued functions. We first construct several families of p-ary linear codes with few weights from weakly regular plateaued unbalanced (resp. balanced) functions over the finite fields of odd characteristics. We observe that the constructed codes are self-orthogonal codes when p = 3. Then, we use the constructed ternary self-orthogonal codes to build new families of ternary LCD codes. Consequently, we obtain (almost) optimal ternary self-orthogonal codes and LCD codes
