Generalized Hermitian codes (Q356719)

The paper under review considers one-point algebraic geometry codes defined using a generalization of the Hermitian curve that has a unique point at infinity \(Q\) as well. These codes were studied by \textit{S. Bulygin} in [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 52, No. 10, 4664--4669 (2006; Zbl 1287.94123)] for \(q=2\) and the authors extend the results for \(q \geq 3\). It is shown that generalized Hermitian curves are Castle curves [\textit{C. Munuera} et al., Coding theory and applications. Second international castle meeting, ICMCTA 2008, Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 5228, 117--127 (2008; Zbl 1166.94012)] and this allows the authors to compute the dimension for every \(m\) and the exact minimum distance for \(n \leq m \leq n + 2g -2\), where \(n\) is the length of the code, \(g\) is the genus of the curve and \(\mathcal{L}(mQ)\) is the Riemann-Roch space used to define the code. For \( 0 \leq m < n\), the order bound approach is considered for bounding the minimum distance. The authors obtain codes with very good parameters, in particular they are compared with the MinT tables [\url{http://mint.sbg.ac.at/}] and several linear codes with the best known parameters are shown. Finally, they consider a subcover of the generalized Hermitian curve that was studied in a previous article of the authors and they also obtain a code that is a record.