Paper 3, Section I, 4H4 \mathrm{H}

Coding and Cryptography
Part II, 2010

What is a linear code? What is a parity check matrix for a linear code? What is the minimum distance d(C)d(C) for a linear code C?C ?

If C1C_{1} and C2C_{2} are linear codes having a certain relation (which you should specify), define the bar product C1C2C_{1} \mid C_{2}. Show that

d(C1C2)=min{2d(C1),d(C2)}d\left(C_{1} \mid C_{2}\right)=\min \left\{2 d\left(C_{1}\right), d\left(C_{2}\right)\right\}

If C1C_{1} has parity check matrix P1P_{1} and C2C_{2} has parity check matrix P2P_{2}, find a parity check matrix for C1C2C_{1} \mid C_{2}.