Cyclic Codes from Cyclotomic Sequences of Order Four

Abstract

Cyclic codes are an interesting subclass of linear codes and have been used in consumer electronics, data transmission technologies, broadcast systems, and computer applications due to their efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, three cyclotomic sequences of order four are employed to construct a number of classes of cyclic codes over $\gf(q)$ with prime length. Under certain conditions lower bounds on the minimum weight are developed. Some of the codes obtained are optimal or almost optimal. In general, the cyclic codes constructed in this paper are very good. Some of the cyclic codes obtained in this paper are closely related to almost difference sets and difference sets. As a byproduct, the $p$-rank of these (almost) difference sets are computed.