Homomorphic encoders of profinite abelian groups I

Let $\{G_i :i\in\N\}$ be a family of finite Abelian groups. We say that a subgroup $G\leq \prod\limits_{i\in \N}G_i$ is \emph{order controllable} if for every $i\in \mathbb{N}$ there is $n_i\in \mathbb{N}$ such that for each $c\in G$, there exists $c_1\in G$ satisfying that $c_{1|[1,i]}=c_{|[1,i]}$, $supp (c_1)\subseteq [1,n_i]$, and order$(c_1)$ divides order$(c_{|[1,n_i]})$. In this paper we investigate the structure of order controllable subgroups. It is proved that every order controllable, profinite, abelian group contains a subset $\{g_n : n\in\N\}$ that topologically generates the group and whose elements $g_n$ all have finite support. As a consequence, sufficient conditions are obtained that allow us to encode, by means of a topological group isomorphism, order controllable profinite abelian groups. Some applications of these results to group codes will appear subsequently \cite{FH:2021}.