A family of group character codes (Q1826973)

Let \(A \) be an elementary abelian \(p\)-group of rank \(n\), and denote by \(| | a| | \) the Hamming weight of the element \(a\in A.\) Suppose that \(\mathbb F_q\) is a finite field of \(q\) elements containing a \(p\)-th root of unity with odd \(q.\) For \(r \in \mathbb Z \) let \[ C_q(r,n;p)= \{ (c_0,c_1,\dots, c_{p^n-1}) \in \mathbb F_q^{p^n} : c_jf_j(x)=0 \text{ for all } x\in A, \;| | x| | >r \}. \] \(C_q(r,n;p)\) is a linear code which is a generalization of the code \(C_q(r,n;2)\) described in [\textit{C. Ding, D. Kohel} and \textit{S. Ling}, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 46, 280--284 (2000; Zbl 0998.94026)]. The authors give the dimension, length, and minimal distance of \(C(r,n;p)\) for the case \(0\leq r < n(p-1)\) (in all other cases this code is \(A \) itself). They show that this code is a matrix-product code [see \textit{T. Blackmore} and \textit{G. H. Norton}, Appl. Algebra Eng. Commun. Comput. 12, 477--500 (2001; Zbl 1004.94034)] with upper triangular matrices and non-singular by columns (they are NSC codes). It is also proved that the dual of \(C_q(r,n,p)\) is (monomial) equivalent to \(C_q(n(p-1)-1-r,n;p).\)