On Generalized Hamming Weights and the Covering Radius of Linear Codes

Abstract

We prove an upper bound on the covering radius of linear codes over IFq in terms of their generalized Hamming weights. We show that this bound is strengthened if we know that the codes satisfy the chain condition or a partial chain condition. We show that this bound improves all prior bounds. Necessary conditions for equality are also presented. Several applications of our bound are presented. We give tables of improved bounds on the covering radius of many cyclic codes using their generalized Hamming weights. We show that most cyclic codes of length ≤ 39 satisfy the chain condition or partial chain condition up to level 5. We use these results to derive tighter bounds on the covering radius of cyclic codes.