Symmetric Rank Codes

As is well known, a finite field _n = GF(q ⁿ ) can be described in terms of n × n matrices A over the field = GF(q) such that their powers A ⁱ , i = 1, 2, ..., q ⁿ – 1, correspond to all nonzero elements of the field. It is proved that, for fields _n of characteristic 2, such a matrix A can be chosen to be symmetric. Several constructions of field-representing symmetric matrices are given. These matrices A ⁱ together with the all-zero matrix can be considered as a _n -linear matrix code in the rank metric with maximum rank distance d = n and maximum possible cardinality q ⁿ . These codes are called symmetric rank codes. In the vector representation, such codes are maximum rank distance (MRD) linear n, 1, n] codes, which allows one to use known rank-error-correcting algorithms. For symmetric codes, an algorithm of erasure symmetrization is proposed, which considerably reduces the decoding complexity as compared with standard algorithms. It is also shown that a linear n, k, d = n – k + 1] MRD code _k containing the above-mentioned one-dimensional symmetric code as a subcode has the following property: the corresponding transposed code is also _n -linear. Such codes have an extended capability of correcting symmetric errors and erasures.