English

Sharper upper bounds for $q$-ary and constant-weight $B_2$ codes

Information Theory 2026-04-01 v2 math.IT

Abstract

We derive refined entropy upper bounds for qq-ary B2B_2 codes by exploiting the Fourier structure of the i.i.d. difference distribution D=XYD=X-Y. Since the pmf of DD is an autocorrelation, its Fourier series is a nonnegative trigonometric polynomial of degree at most q1q-1. This leads to a natural convex relaxation over candidate difference distributions, equivalently expressible through an infinite family of positive semidefinite Toeplitz constraints. The resulting formulation admits a simple Gram interpretation and yields certified upper bounds through truncated semidefinite programs. Combined with the prefix-suffix method, this gives improved asymptotic rate upper bounds for qq-ary B2B_2 codes; in particular, for q{9,10,11,12,13}q\in\{9,10,11,12,13\} the resulting values improve on the best bounds known in the literature. We also study binary constant-weight B2B_2 codes. Extending the distance-distribution method of Cohen, Litsyn, and Z\'emor to the constant-weight setting, and combining it with Litsyn's asymptotic linear-programming bound for constant-weight codes, we derive a new upper bound on the constant-weight B2B_2 rate.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.27639,
  title  = {Sharper upper bounds for $q$-ary and constant-weight $B_2$ codes},
  author = {Stefano Della Fiore},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.27639},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:42:49.483Z