Anti-isomorphisms, character modules and self-dual codes over non-commutative rings

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to Vera Pless. It is an elaboration on ideas of Nebe, Rains and Sloane: by assuming the existence of an anti-isomorphism on a finite ring and by assuming a module alphabet has a well-behaved duality, one is able to study self-dual codes defined over alphabets that are modules over a non-commutative ring. Various examples are discussed.