New results on self-orthogonal unequal error protection codes

A lower bound on the length of binary self-orthogonal unequal error protection (UEP) codes is derived, and two design procedures for constructing optimal self-orthogonal UEP codes are proposed. With this lower bound, known self-orthogonal UEP codes can be evaluated. It is pointed out that, for given values of minimum distance and code rate, the self-orthogonal codes must be relatively long, so optimal self-orthogonal codes are not optimal in general. But self-orthogonal codes can be implemented simply, and they have error-correcting capabilities beyond those guaranteed by their minimum distance. These properties can be viewed as a partial compensation for using self-orthogonal codes