Cyclic Codes from APN and Planar Functions

Cyclic codes are a subclass of linear codes and have applications in consumer electronics, data storage systems, and communication systems as they have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, almost perfect nonlinear functions and planar functions over finite fields are employed to construct a number of classes of cyclic codes. Lower bounds on the minimum weight of some classes of the cyclic codes are developed. The minimum weights of some other classes of the codes constructed in this paper are determined. The dimensions of the codes are flexible. Many of the codes presented in this paper are optimal or almost optimal in the sense that they meet some bound on linear codes. Ten open problems regarding cyclic codes from highly nonlinear functions are also presented.