On the Capacity of Abelian Group Codes Over Discrete Memoryless Channels

Abstract: For most discrete memoryless channels, there does not exist a linear code for the channel which uses all of the channel's input symbols. Therefore, linearity of the code for such channels is a very restrictive condition and there should be a loosening of the algebraic structure of the code to a degree that the code can admit any channel input alphabet. For any channel input alphabet size, there always exists an Abelian group structure defined on the alphabet. We investigate the capacity of Abelian group codes over discrete memoryless channels and provide lower and upper bounds on the capacity.