Weight Enumerators and Gray Maps of Linear Codes over Rings

Abstract

The main focus in this thesis is linear codes over rings. In the first part, we look at linear codes over Galois rings, and using the homogeneous weight, we improve upon Wilson's results about the prime power that divides the coefficients of the homogeneous weight enumerators of these codes. We also prove that our results are best possible. Our results about homogeneous weight enumerators of linear codes over Galois rings generalize the results that we have for the Lee weight enumerators of linear codes over the ring of integers modulo 4. We also consider other weight enumerators, in particular the complete weight enumerators of linear codes and we obtain MacWilliams-like identities for these weight enumerators considering different rings. These MacWilliams-like identities lead to MacWilliams identities for the Hamming weight enumerators of linear codes over rings. We also give a counter-example to show that we cannot have MacWilliams-like identities for the Euclidean weight enumerators of linear codes over the ring of integers modulo 4. We also look at Gray maps from Galois rings to the finite field of prime size. We first give an application of the distance preserving Gray maps to obtain good ternary codes, and then we give an inductive algebraic construction of a distance preserving Gray map from Galois rings with the homogeneous distance to the field of prime size with the Hamming distance as well as a combinatorial construction. By using the Gray maps, we obtain some results about the weight enumerators of linear codes over the ring of dual numbers. In the last part of this work, we consider the permutation invariance of binary codes and the connection with linearity over certain rings. Among the rings considered, we have different variations and extensions of the ring of dual numbers. In this context we consider the Reed-Muller codes and answer questions about permutation invariance of Reed-Muller codes under certain permutation groups and the linearity of Reed-Muller codes over these aforementioned rings.