English

Tilings of $\mathcal{H}_{q}(n,w)$ with optimal $(n,d,w)_{q}$-codes

Combinatorics 2025-12-30 v1

Abstract

The metric space Hq(n,w)\mathcal{H}_{q}(n,w) is the set of all words of length nn with weight ww over the alphabet Zq\mathbb{Z}_{q}, under the Hamming distance metric. A qq-ary constant-weight code, as a nonempty subset of Hq(n,w)\mathcal{H}_{q}(n,w), has always been a fundamental topic in coding theory. This paper investigates the tiling problem of Hq(n,w)\mathcal{H}_{q}(n,w) with optimal (n,d,w)q(n,d,w)_{q}-codes, simply denoted by TOCq(n,d,w)\mathrm{TOC}_{q}(n,d,w), meaning a partition of Hq(n,w)\mathcal{H}_{q}(n,w) into mutually disjoint optimal qq-ary constant-weight codes with distance dd. When the distance dd is odd, we investigate large sets of generalized Steiner systems. When dd is even, we define large sets of generalized maximum H-packings. We present several general construction approaches for generating TOCq(n,d,w)\mathrm{TOC}_{q}(n,d,w)s via tt-resolvable Steiner systems and almost-regular edge-colorings of complete hypergraphs. For the cases d=2d=2 and d=2wd=2w, we completely resolve the existence problem of TOCq(n,d,w)\mathrm{TOC}_{q}(n,d,w)s for all parameters q,nq,n and ww. Particularly, we pay attention to tilings for weight three. For binary case and weight three, the existence problem of TOC2(n,d,3)\mathrm{TOC}_{2}(n,d,3)s is totally resolved. For specific alphabet size q3q\ge 3, we obtain many infinite families of TOCq(n,d,3)\mathrm{TOC}_{q}(n,d,3)s for distances d=3,4,5d=3,4,5.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.22754,
  title  = {Tilings of $\mathcal{H}_{q}(n,w)$ with optimal $(n,d,w)_{q}$-codes},
  author = {Yuli Tan and Junling Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.22754},
  year   = {2025}
}

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21 pages