Processing math: 100%
Ask Your Question

Revision history [back]

click to hide/show revision 1
initial version

Yes, there is a problem with the Sage implementation. But other implementations such as the one at bma.bozhu.me may give varying results. The point is that for your sequence s0,s1,,s35 there does not exist a unique sequence c1,c2,,ck in GF(2) such that si+kj=1cjsij=0,for i=k,,35.

The result that Sage produces comes from the fact that si+si2+si3+si4+si5=0,for i=16,,33. But this fails (generally) if i=5,,15 or i=34,35.

The degree 19 result indeed says that si+j{1,2,5,6,9,10,11,13,16,17,19}sij=0,for i=19,,35. However, this is not unique (it cannot be because the input sequence only has length 36), for example we could add in si2+si4+si5+si6+si7, which, as we have seen, is zero for i=18,,35. Thus the degree 19 polynomial has no right to be called the minimal polynomial. Of course, Massey's 1969 paper "Shift-register synthesis and BCH decoding" is clear on this point; the algorithm he describes produces "one of the [linear feedback shift registers] of [minimum length] which generates s0,s1,,sN" [§ III].