Bounds on the Size and Asymptotic Rate of Subblock-Constrained Codes

The study of subblock-constrained codes has recently gained attention due to their application in diverse fields. We present bounds on the size and asymptotic rate for two classes of subblock-constrained codes. The first class is binary constant subblock-composition codes (CSCCs), where each codeword is partitioned into equal sized subblocks, and every subblock has the same fixed weight. The second class is binary subblock energy-constrained codes (SECCs), where the weight of every subblock exceeds a given threshold. We present novel upper and lower bounds on the code sizes and asymptotic rates for the binary CSCCs and SECCs. For a fixed subblock length and small relative distance, we show that the asymptotic rate for CSCCs (respectively SECCs) is strictly lower than the corresponding rate for constant weight codes (CWCs) [respectively heavy weight codes (HWCs)]. Furthermore, for codes with high weight and low relative distance, we show that the asymptotic rate for CSCCs is strictly lower than that of SECCs, which contrasts with the fact that the asymptotic rate for the CWCs is equal to that of the HWCs. We also provide a correction to an earlier result by Chee et al. (2014) on the asymptotic CSCC rate. In addition, we present several numerical examples comparing the rates for the CSCCs and SECCs with those for the CWCs and HWCs.