A Class of Three-Weight Cyclic Codes

Cyclic codes are a subclass of linear codes and have applications in consumer electronics, data storage systems, and communication systems as they have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In this paper, a class of three-weight cyclic codes over $\gf(p)$ whose duals have two zeros is presented, where $p$ is an odd prime. The weight distribution of this class of cyclic codes is settled. Some of the cyclic codes are optimal. The duals of a subclass of the cyclic codes are also studied and proved to be optimal.