Experimental constructions of self-dual codes (Q1400981)

The authors propose a new experimental method to construct quickly and easily ``good'' self-dual codes of any length over any alphabet. The term ``good'' is appointed to the minimum distance of the code which is exactly or approximately very close to the highest known minimum distance for the self-dual code of a particular length. The method given generalizes the binary code construction proposed to any alphabet and mainly relies on computation. An extended list of self-dual codes constructed by this method is given, which seems to indicate that the codes are ``good'' indeed. These codes are constructed to phase the burst error correction. The notion and the analysis of these codes are also given in the paper. The given general experimental method is a generalization of the codes of \textit{J. Carlach} and \textit{C. Vervoux} [A new family of block-turbo codes, Proc. AAECC13, Hawaii, 15-16 (1999)]. Some special cases of these codes are also considered.