Weight distribution of cyclic codes with arbitrary number of generalized Niho type zeroes

Abstract

Cyclic codes are an important class of linear codes, whose weight distribution have been extensively studied. Most previous results obtained so far were for cyclic codes with no more than three zeroes. Inspired by the works of Li et al. (Sci China Math 53:3279---3286, 2010; IEEE Trans Inf Theory 60:3903---3912, 2014), we study two families of cyclic codes over $${\mathbb F}_p$$Fp with arbitrary number of zeroes of generalized Niho type, more precisely $${\mathcal {C}_{(d_0,d_1,\ldots ,d_t)}^{(1)}}$$C(d0,d1,?,dt)(1) (for $$p=2$$p=2) of $$t+1$$t+1 zeroes, and $${\mathcal {C}_{(\widetilde{d}_1,\ldots ,\widetilde{d}_t)}^{(2)}}$$C(d~1,?,d~t)(2) (for any prime $$p$$p) of $$t$$t zeroes for any $$t$$t. We find that the first family has at most $$(2t+1)$$(2t+1) non-zero weights, and the second has at most $$2t$$2t non-zero weights. Their weight distribution are also determined in the paper.