International Conference on Advances in Interdisciplinary Statistics and Combinatorics,
October 12–14, 2007, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North
Carolina, USA
COMBINATORIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF BLOCK CODES
PRITI SHANKAR
We look at graphical descriptions of block codes known as trellises, which illustrate connections between algebra and graph theory, and can be used to develop
powerful decoding algorithms. Trellis sizes for linear block codes are known to
grow exponentially with the code parameters. Of considerable interest to coding
theorists therefore, are more compact descriptions called tail-biting trellises which
in some cases can be much smaller than any conventional trellis for the same code
. We derive some interesting properties of tail-biting trellises and present a new
decoding algorithm.
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
E-mail address: priti@csa.iisc.ernet.in
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