On decomposability of 4-ary distance 2 MDS codes, double-codes, and \(n\)-quasigroups of order 4 (Q932607)

This paper is motivated by studying the 4-ary distance 2 MDS codes or, equivalently, the \(n\)-quasigroups of order 4. The author begins by defining the concept of a double-MDS-code, which is a set with properties of the union of two disjoint distance 2 MDS codes. The main result proved is the theorem on the decomposition of double-MDS-codes into prime double-MDS-codes and shown how to generalize the result to \(q/2\)-fold MDS codes. The decomposability of distance 2 MDS codes and \(n\)-quasigroups has also been discussed. Some auxiliary lemmas about functions with separable arguments (and used) have been proved in the Appendix.