Galois geometries and coding theory (Q908053)

Galois geometries (finite geometries, in general) and (algebraic) coding theory have had a long standing relationship and the scholarly exposition under review presents some significant new results in this topic and as the article says:``We present new results and open problems to simulate research on Galois geometries, coding theory and their continuously developing and increasing interactions.'' The earliest link in this topic seems to be the linear codes that meet the Singleton bound called the MDS codes (that are linear \([n, n-k, n-k+1]_q\)-linear codes) and \(n\)-arcs in \(\mathrm{PG}(n-1-k, q)\). The article under review contains a wealth of information beginning with some significant results on GDRS codes in Section 1. In Section 2, the authors discuss the Griesmer bound and the covering radius of a code as well as saturating sets in the projective geometry. Projective Reed-Muller codes (RM codes), generalized RM codes and functional codes are discussed in Section 3. Section 4 of the article is the largest section that contains many new results. This includes network codes (codes over a transpiration network) and Grassmannian codes. This Section also discusses the difficult area of block designs over \(\mathbb F_q\) where a large number of questions remain unanswered despite some significant discoveries. This section concludes with a discussion of spreads in projective geometries, parallelisms, \(q\)-covering designs and equidistant codes. The article is very well written and is an extremely valuable addition to the area of finite projective geometries and algebraic codes.