On a finite matrix group and codes over a Euclidean sphere (Q1386628)

For \(x\) a vector and \(\{G\}\) some group of orthogonal matrices, a spherical code is defined as the set of vectors \(\{xG\}\). In this paper a new group of orthogonal matrices is proposed. A finite field GF(\(p)\) is exploited in the new code construction. One obtains that the dimension of the code vectors is equal to \(2^n\) if \(p=2\), or \(2p^n\) if \(p>2\), the number of code words for large \(n\) is proportional to \(2^{n (2n+1)+1}\) if \(p=2\), or \(p^{n (2n+3)+1}\) if \(p>2\) and the code distance is \((2-\sqrt {2})^{1/2}\). These codes have more codewords than spherical codes with the same distance obtained from linear binary codes. The authors also give some new lower estimates for kissing numbers.