A Multivariate Weight Enumerator for Tail-biting Trellis Pseudocodewords

Abstract

Tail-biting-trellis representations of codes allow for iterative decoding algorithms, which are limited in effectiveness by the presence of pseudocodewords. We introduce a multivariate weight enumerator that keeps track of these pseudocodewords. This enumerator is invariant under many linear transformations, often enabling us to compute it exactly. The extended binary Golay code has a particularly nice tail-biting-trellis and a famous unsolved question is to determine its minimal AWGN pseudodistance. The new enumerator provides an inroad to this problem.