Simulated Annealing and Optimal Codes

Following standard notation, an (n, m, d) code C denotes a binary code C which has length n, size m, and Hamming distance d. According to Hill [6] the “main coding theory problem” is to optimize one of these three parameters when the other two are held fixed. The usual version of this optimization problem is to find the largest code for a given length and given minimum distance. This is the problem we shall consider, thus making it clear what we mean by an “optimal code.