Walsh Hadamard Code

In coding theory, the WalshHadamard code, named after the American mathematician Joseph Leonard Walsh and the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard, is an example of a linear code over a binary alphabet that maps messages of length to codewords of length . The WalshHadamard code is unique in that each non-zero codeword hasHamming weight of exactly the distance of the code is also , which implies that . In standard coding theory notation, this means that the Walsh

Hadamard code is a -code. The Hadamard code can be seen as a slightly improved version of the WalshHadamard code as it achieves the same block length and minimum distance with a message length of , that is, it can transmit one more bit of information per codeword, but this improvement comes at the expense of a slightly more complicated construction. The WalshHadamard code is a locally decodable code, which provides a way to recover parts of the original message with high probability, while only looking at a small fraction of the received word. This gives rise to applications in computational complexity theory and particularly in the design of probabilistically checkable proofs. It can also be shown that, using list decoding, the original message can be recovered as long as less than 1/2 of the bits in the received word have been corrupted. In code division multiple access (CDMA) communication, the WalshHadamard code is used to define individual communication channels. It is usual in the CDMA literature to refer to codewords as codes. Each user will use a different codeword, or code, to modulate their signal. Because WalshHadamard codewords are mathematically orthogonal, a Walsh-encoded signal appears as random noise to a CDMA capable mobile terminal, unless that terminal uses the same codeword as the one used to encode the incomingsignal. Definition The generator matrix for the WalshHadamard code of dimension is given by

where

is the vector corresponding to the binary representation of . In other

words, is the list of all vectors of in somelexicographic order. For example, the generator matrix for the WalshHadamard code of dimension 3 is

As is possible for any linear code generated by a generator matrix, we encode a message , viewed as a row vector, by computing its codeword using the vector-matrix product in the vector space over the finite field :

This way, the matrix can write

defines a linear operator . uses the scalar product over

and we

A more explicit, equivalent definition of

For any two strings

, we have that

Then the WalshHadamard code is the function maps every string satisfying coordinate of Distance into the string for every , identifying with (where denotes the th

in some way).

The distance of a code is the minimum Hamming distance between any two distinct codewords, i.e., the minimum number of positions at which two distinct codewords differ. Since the WalshHadamard code is a linear code, the distance is equal to the minimum Hamming weight among all of its non-zero codewords. All non-zero codewords of the WalshHadamard code have a Hamming weight of exactly by the following argument.

Let of dimension Let Let

be the . .

generator matrix for a Walsh-Hadamard code

represent the Hamming weight of vector

be a non-zero message in

We want to show that for all non-zero codewords. Remember that all arithmetic is done over , which is the finite field of size 2. Let pair be a non-zero bit of arbitrary message, , (where . Pair up the columns of such that for each position). By the way

is the zero vector with a 1 in the pairs. Then note .

is constructed, there will be exactly that exactly one of that are a 1. ,

, implies that will have exactly bits

must be 1. There are

pairs, so

Therefore, the Hamming weight of every codeword in the code is exactly

. .

Being a linear code, this means that the distance of the Walsh-Hadamard code is