Bounds and constructions for ternary constant-composition codes

Abstract

The problem of determining the maximum size of a ternary code is considered, under the restriction that each symbol should appear a given number of times in each codeword. Upper and lower bounds on the size of such codes under the Hamming metric are discussed, where the lower bounds follow from constructions of good codes. Some of the results are obtained by explicitly finding codes by computer search. A table of exact values and best known bounds on the maximum size for codes of length at most 10 is presented.