A class of three-weight and five-weight linear codes

Abstract: Recently, linear codes with few weights have been widely studied, since they have applications in data storage systems, communication systems and consumer electronics. In this paper, we present a class of three-weight and five-weight linear codes over Fp, where p is an odd prime and Fp denotes a finite field with p elements. The weight distributions of the linear codes constructed in this paper are also settled. Moreover, the linear codes illustrated in the paper may have applications in secret sharing schemes.