Extended Abstract: Codes as Modules over Skew Polynomial Rings

This talk is an overview of codes that are defined as modules over skew polynomial rings. These codes can be seen as a generalization of cyclic codes or more generally polynominal codes to a non commutative polynomial ring. Most properties of classical cyclic codes can be generalized to this new setting and self-dual codes can be easily identified. Those rings are no longer unique factorization rings, therefore there are many factors of X-n - 1, each generating a "skew cyclic code". In previous works many new codes and new self-dual codes with a better distance than existing codes have been found. Recently cyclic and skew-cyclic codes over rings have been extensively studied in order to obtain codes over subfields (or subrings) under mapping with good properties.