The minimal Hamming distance of concatenation of some word and a part of it encoded using Hamming codes

coding-theory

A word $M$ is of $n^2$ bits, $n>3$ is arranged in a $n\times n$ matrix. $A$ is the main diagonal of the matrix (that is elements $a_{i,j}$, $i=j$) and is encoded with Hamming code, resulting in $B$. The final result transmitted is word $M$ concatenated with $B$ (let us call it $R$).
What is the minimal Hamming distance of $R$?

The minimal Hamming distance of $B$ is $3$ as holds with any Hamming code. $M$ is not encoded at all so its Hamming distance is $1$. Although $B$ is part of $R$ but $M$ is also part of $R$ and we have no way of knowing if a potential error comes from $B$ or $M$ so the minimal Hamming distance of $R$ is $1$ as well.

Am I in the right direction?

Best Answer

That is correct. The off-diagonal bits are not protected at all in this scheme, and toggling one of them does not affect any other bits. Therefore the minimum distance is $1$.