On the characterization of linear uniquely decodable codes (Q1963167)

A uniquely decodable (UD) code is a code such that any vector of the ambient space has a unique closest codeword. After the introduction, in Section 2, the authors investigate the structure of general binary linear UD code and identify perfect subcodes. In Section 3 these results are applied to solve the existence problem for UD codes in the case when the covering radius \(\rho\leq 2\). Finally, nonlinear and nonbinary versions of Section 2 are envisaged.