Lattices of quasi-cyclic codes (Q1826968)

Throughout, let \(C\) be a code of word length \(\ell\) and \(m\) a positive integer. The objective of this paper is to construct quasi-cyclic codes of word length \(\ell m\) having a certain trellis as a building block. To be more precise, let us fix 2 linear subspaces of \(C\), say \(C_1\) and \(C_2\), such that \(C_2\subseteq C_1\). Consider the trellis \(\mathcal T=(V,E)\) of depth \(m\) with \(V=\bigcup_{i=0}^mV_i\) defined as follows. Let \([C:C_1]=s\) and \(\alpha_1,\ldots,\alpha_s\in C\) such that \(\alpha_i-\alpha_j\not\in C_1\) for \(i\neq j\). Let \([C_1:C_2]=t\) and \(\beta_1,\ldots,\beta_t\in C_1\) such that \(\beta_i-\beta_j\not\in C_2\) for \(i\neq j\). Then \(V_0=V_m:=\{0\}\) and \(V_i:=\bigcup_{i=1}^s\bigcup_{j=1}^t\{\alpha_i+\beta_j\}\) for \(i=1,\ldots,m-1\). The edge set \(E\) is defined as follows. The arcs from \(0\) to \(V_1\) and \(V_{m-1}\) to \(0\) are respectively \([0,\alpha_i+\beta_j]\) and \([\alpha_i+\beta_j,0]\). For the other levels the arcs are \([\alpha_i+\beta_j,\alpha_i+\beta_k]\). Then the code obtained from \(\mathcal T\) is quasi-cyclic of length \(\ell m\). The case \(m=3\) of this construction generalizes \textit{G. D. Forney}'s [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 34, 1152--1187 (1989; Zbl 0665.94019)]. Finally the author points out a connection between the codes in this paper with a certain algebraic construction of quasi-cyclic codes in \textit{S. Ling} and \textit{P. Solé}'s paper [ibid. 47, 2751--2760 (2001; Zbl 1023.94015)].