Explicit Good Subspace-metric Codes and Subset-metric Codes

Abstract

In this paper motivated from subspace coding we introduce subspacemetric and subset-metric codes. These are coordinate-position independent pseudometrics and suitable for the folded codes introduced by Guruswami and Redra. The half-Singleton upper bounds for linear subspace-metric and subset-metric codes are proved. Subspace distances and subset distances of codes are natural lower bounds for insdel distances of codes, and then can be used to lower bound the insertion-deletion error-correcting capabilities of codes. The problem to construct efficient insertion-deletion error-correcting codes is notorious difficult and has attracted a long-time continuous efforts. The recent breakthrough is the algorithmic construction of near-Singleton optimal rate-distance tradeoff insertion-deletion code families by B. Haeupler and A. Shahrasbi in 2017 from their synchronization string technique. However most nice codes in these recent results are not explicit though many of them can be constructed by highly efficient algorithms. Our subspace-metric and subset-metric codes can be used to construct systemic explicit well-structured insertion-deletion codes. We present some near-optimal subspace-metric and subset-metric codes from known constant dimension subspace codes. By analysing the subset distances of folded codes from evaluation codes of linear mappings, we prove that they have high subset distances and then are explicit good insertion-deletion codes.