Two ``dual'' families of nearly-linear codes over \(\mathbb Z_p, p\) odd (Q5938532)

\textit{R. Hammons}, \textit{P. V. Kumar}, \textit{R. Calderbank}, \textit{P. Sloane} and \textit{P. Solé} [IEEF Trans. Inf. Theory 40, 301-319 (1994; Zbl 0811.94039)] constructed two dual families of linear codes over \(\mathbb{Z}_4\), called the Kerdock and Preparata codes over \(\mathbb{Z}_4\). They showed that applying the Gray mapping from \(\mathbb{Z}_4\) to \(\mathbb{Z}^2_2\) on these codes gives the nonlinear binary Kerdock and Preparata (-like) codes. This paper generalizes in a direct manner the well known construction above to \(\mathbb{Z}_4\) where \(q=p^2\) and \(p\) is an odd prime. The generalization of the codes considered are dual linear codes over \(\mathbb{Z}_q\) of length \(n=p^m-1\), \(\text{gcd} (m,p)=1\), and the codes can naturally be described using Galois rings over \(\mathbb{Z}_q\). The authors introduce a weight function over \(\mathbb{Z}_q\) which leads to an isometry from \(\mathbb{Z}_q\) to \(\mathbb{Z}_p^p\). The parameters and properties of the \(p\)-ary codes obtained by applying the new mapping are studied.