Trellis codes with a good distance profile constructed from expander graphs

Yubin Zhu; Zitan Chen

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arXiv · 2602.08718

Trellis codes with a good distance profile constructed from expander graphs

Yubin Zhu·Zitan Chen

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Abstract

We derive Singleton-type bounds on the free distance and column distances of trellis codes. Our results show that, at a given time instant, the maximum attainable column distance of trellis codes can exceed that of convolutional codes. Moreover, using expander graphs, we construct trellis codes over constant-size alphabets that achieve a rate-distance trade-off arbitrarily close to that of convolutional codes with a maximum distance profile. By comparison, all known constructions of convolutional codes with a maximum distance profile require working over alphabets whose size grows at least exponentially with the number of output symbols per time instant.

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Yubin Zhu, Zitan Chen. 2026-02-09. Trellis codes with a good distance profile constructed from expander graphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08718

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