An Efficient Tree Search Algorithm for the Free Distance of Variable-Length Error-Correcting Codes

We propose an efficient tree search algorithm for determining the free distance of variable-length error-correcting codes (VLECs). A main idea behind the algorithm is to structure all pairs of code word-concatenated sequences as a tree, in which we seek the pair of sequences that determine the free distance. In order to speed up the algorithm, we establish constraints that do not compromise optimality in determining the free distance. Experimental results on VLECs algorithmically constructed for the English alphabet show that our algorithm requires a considerably smaller number of bitwise distance computations and covers a much smaller number of tree nodes than Dijkstra's algorithm operating over the pairwise distance graph while being a hundred times faster in terms of execution time.