A New Algorithm for Finding Minimum-Weight Words in a Linear Code: Application to Primitive Narrow-Sense BCH Codes of Length~511
Abstract
An algorithm for finding small-weight words in large linear codes is developed. It is in particular able to decode random [512,256,57]-linear codes in 9~hours on a DEC alpha computer. We determine with it the minimum distance of some binary BCH codes of length~511, which were not known.