On the performance of reed-muller codes with respect to random errors and erasures

This work proves new results on the ability of binary Reed-Muller codes to decode from random errors and erasures. Specifically, we prove that RM codes with m variables and degree γm, for some explicit constant γ, achieve capacity for random erasures (i.e. for the binary erasure channel) and for random errors (for the binary symmetric channel). Earlier, it was known that RM codes achieve capacity for the binary symmetric channel for degrees r = o(m). For the binary erasure channel it was known that RM codes achieve capacity for degree o(m) or r ∈ [m/2±O(√m)]. Thus, our results provide a new range of parameters for which RM achieve capacity for these two well studied channels. In addition, our results imply that for every ε > 0 (in fact we can get up to ε = Ω ( ^{√ √}_m^m) ) RM codes of degree r < (1/2 − ε)m can correct a fraction of 1 − o(1) random erasures with high probability. We also show that, information theoretically, such codes can handle a fraction of ¹₂ −o(1) random errors with high probability. For example, given noisy evaluations of a degree 0.499m polynomial, it is possible to interpolate it even if a random 0.499 fraction of the evaluations were corrupted, with high probability. While the o(1) terms are not the correct ones to ensure capacity, these results show that RM codes of rates up to 1/poly(log n) (where n = 2^m is the block length) are is some sense as good as capacity achieving codes. We obtain these results by proving improved bounds on the weight distribution of Reed-Muller codes of high degrees. Namely, given weight β ∈ (0, 1) we prove an upper bound on the number of codewords of relative weight at most β. We obtain new results in two different settings: for weights β < 1/2 and for weights that are close to 1/2. Our results for weights close to 1/2 also answer an open problem posed by Beame et al. [10].