Optimal RS-like LRC codes of arbitrary length (Q780366)

RS-like locally recoverable (LRC) codes have a construction based on the classical construction of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, where codewords are obtained as evaluations of suitably chosen polynomials. These codes were previously introduced under the assumption that the length \(n\) of the code is divisible by \(r+1,\) where \(r\) is the locality of the code. In this paper, a construction of LRC codes is proposed where the above restriction on the code length is removed completely. By this new construction, over a finite field \(\mathrm{GF}(q),\) RS-like LRC codes of any length \(n\leq q\) can be constructed. Furthermore, the length of a general LRC code can be larger than \(q.\) To cover all possible lengths of the code, the main construction has been divided into two parts: -- Construction 1 (for \(u = r - 1\) and \(r > 1\)), also covering the case \(r=2\) for which \(n\bmod (r + 1) = 1\); -- Construction 2 (for \(0 < u < r - 1\)) removes the restriction on the length of the code given in previous research, i.e., the construction covers the case \(n\bmod (r + 1) = 1\). Both constructions are based on similar idea of shortening a code of length \(\left\lceil\frac{n}{r+1}\right\rceil(r+1)\) from two local sets. Further, it is shown that these codes are distance-optimal for their parameters.