Griesmer type bounds for additive codes over finite fields, integral and fractional MDS codes

Abstract: In this article we prove Griesmer type bounds for additive codes over finite fields. These new bounds give upper bounds on the length of maximum distance separable (MDS) codes, codes which attain the Singleton bound. We will also consider codes to be MDS if they attain the fractional Singleton bound, due to Huffman. We prove that this bound in the fractional case can be obtained by codes whose length surpasses the length of the longest known codes in the integral case. For small parameters, we provide exhaustive computational results for additive MDS codes, by classifying the corresponding (fractional) subspace-arcs. This includes a complete classification of fractional additive MDS codes of size 243 over the field of order 9.