Explicit Subcodes of Reed-Solomon Codes That Efficiently Achieve List Decoding Capacity

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce an explicit family of subcodes of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes that efficiently achieve list decoding capacity with a constant output list size. The codes are constructed by initially forming the tensor product of two RS codes with carefully selected evaluation sets, followed by specific cyclic shifts to the codeword rows. This process results in each codeword column being treated as an individual coordinate, reminiscent of prior capacity-achieving codes, such as folded RS codes and univariate multiplicity codes. This construction is easily shown to be a subcode of an interleaved RS code, equivalently, an RS code evaluated on a subfield. Alternatively, the codes can be constructed by the evaluation of bivariate polynomials over orbits generated by two affine transformations with coprime orders, extending the earlier use of a single affine transformation in folded RS codes and the recent affine folded RS codes introduced by Bhandari et al. (IEEE T-IT, Feb. 2024). While our codes require large, yet constant characteristic, the two affine transformations facilitate achieving code length equal to the field size, without the restriction of the field being prime, contrasting with univariate multiplicity codes.