[Jump to code hierarchy]

Real projective space code

Alternative names: \(\mathbb{R}P^N\) code, Packing in \(\mathbb{R}P^N\).

Description

Encodes \(K\) states (codewords) into a real projective space \(\mathbb{R}P^N\), the space of lines in real space. The space for \(N=2\) is called the projective plane.

Protection

A common distance measure on real projective space is the inner product (a.k.a. coherence). Sets of lines with minimal inner product are called Grassmanian frames [1], and most of these frames are equiangular tight frames [2]. The Welch bound is a lower bound on the worst-case coherence of a code [3].

Cousins

  • Constant-energy spherical code— Real projective space can be obtained from the sphere by identifying antipodal points, i.e., \(\mathbb{R}P^N = S^N/\mathbb{Z}_2\). As such, real projective space codes are in one-to-one correspondence with antipodal spherical codes, with each antipodal pair of spherical codewords corresponding to one line in projective space.
  • Kerdock code— The 12 sets of antipodal pairs of the 24-cell code form a sharp configuration in the projective space \(\mathbb{R}P^3\) [4]. This is a special case of a family of real projective plane codes, constructed using Kerdock codes [5] (cf. [6]).
  • \(E_7\) lattice-shell code— The 63 sets of antipodal pairs of the smallest \(E_7\) lattice shell form a sharp configuration in the projective space \(\mathbb{R}P^6\) [4].
  • \(E_6\) lattice-shell code— The 36 sets of antipodal pairs of the smallest \(E_6\) lattice shell form a sharp configuration in the projective space \(\mathbb{R}P^5\) [4].
  • Polygon code— The \(q/2\) sets of antipodal pairs of a \(q\)-gon form a tight design on the projective plane [6].
  • 24-cell code— The 12 sets of antipodal pairs of the 24-cell code form a sharp configuration in the projective space \(\mathbb{R}P^3\) [4]. This is a special case of a family of real projective plane codes, constructed using Kerdock codes [5] (cf. [6]).
  • Witting polytope code— Antipodal pairs of points of the Witting polytope code form a 3-design in \(\mathbb{R}P^7\) [4].

Member of code lists

Primary Hierarchy

Parents
Real projective spaces \(\mathbb{R}P^N\) are real Grassmannians \(G/H\) for \(G = O(N+1)\) and \(H = O(N)\times O(1)\).
Real projective space code

References

[1]
T. Strohmer and R. Heath, “Grassmannian Frames with Applications to Coding and Communication”, (2003) arXiv:math/0301135
[2]
M. Fickus and D. G. Mixon, “Tables of the existence of equiangular tight frames”, (2016) arXiv:1504.00253
[3]
L. Welch, “Lower bounds on the maximum cross correlation of signals (Corresp.)”, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 20, 397 (1974) DOI
[4]
H. Cohn and A. Kumar, “Universally optimal distribution of points on spheres”, Journal of the American Mathematical Society 20, 99 (2006) arXiv:math/0607446 DOI
[5]
Levenshtein, V. I. (1982). Bounds on the maximal cardinality of a code with bounded modulus of the inner product. In Soviet Math. Dokl (Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 526-531).
[6]
H. Cohn, A. Kumar, and G. Minton, “Optimal simplices and codes in projective spaces”, Geometry & Topology 20, 1289 (2016) arXiv:1308.3188 DOI
Page edit log

Your contribution is welcome!

on github.com (edit & pull request)— see instructions

edit on this site

Zoo Code ID: real_projective

Cite as:
“Real projective space code”, The Error Correction Zoo (V. V. Albert & P. Faist, eds.), 2025. https://errorcorrectionzoo.org/c/real_projective
BibTeX:
@incollection{eczoo_real_projective, title={Real projective space code}, booktitle={The Error Correction Zoo}, year={2025}, editor={Albert, Victor V. and Faist, Philippe}, url={https://errorcorrectionzoo.org/c/real_projective} }
Share via:
Twitter | Mastodon |  | E-mail
Permanent link:
https://errorcorrectionzoo.org/c/real_projective

Cite as:

“Real projective space code”, The Error Correction Zoo (V. V. Albert & P. Faist, eds.), 2025. https://errorcorrectionzoo.org/c/real_projective

Github: https://github.com/errorcorrectionzoo/eczoo_data/edit/main/codes/classical/homogeneous/grassmann/real_projective.yml.