On the linear ordering of some classes of negacyclic and cyclic codes and their distance distributions (Q2469466)

Cyclic codes of length \(n\) over a field \(F\) can be viewed as ideals in \(F[x]/ \langle x^n-1\rangle\) and negacyclic codes as ideals in \(F[x]/ \langle x^n+1\rangle.\) When \(n\) is not divisible by the characteristic of the field the classification of such codes is easily obtained. The case when \(n\) is divisible by the characteristic is more difficult and is referred to as the repeated-root case. In this work the authors investigate negacyclic codes over the fields of order \(p^a\) when the length is \(p^s\). They use the structure of these codes to obtain their Hamming distance distribution. A bijection between negacyclic and cyclic codes is then used to give corresponding results for cyclic codes.