Generalized MacWilliams identities and their applications to perfect binary codes

Abstract

We present generalized MacWilliams identities for binary codes. These identities naturally lead to the concepts of the local weight distribution of a binary code with respect to a word u and its MacWilliams u-transform. In the case that u is the all-one word, these ones correspond to the weight distribution of a binary code and its MacWilliams transform, respectively. We identify a word v with its support, and consider v as a subset of {1, 2,..., n}. For two words u,w of length n such that their intersection is the empty set, define the u-face centered at w to be the set ${\{z \cup w : z \subseteq u\}}$ . A connection between our MacWilliams u-transform and the weight distribution of a binary code in the u-face centered at the zero word is presented. As their applications, we also investigate the properties of a perfect binary code. For a perfect binary code C, the main results are as follows: first, it is proved that our local weight distribution of C is uniquely determined by the number of codewords of C in the orthogonal u-face centered at the zero word. Next, we give a direct proof for the known result, concerning the weight distribution of a coset of C in the u-face centered at the zero word, by A. Y. Vasil’eva without using induction. Finally, it is proved that the weight distribution of C in the orthogonal u-face centered at w is uniquely determined by the codewords of C in the u-face centered at the zero word.