Improved upper bounds on sizes of codes

Let A(n,d) denote the maximum possible number of codewords in a binary code of length n and minimum Hamming distance d. For large values of n, the best known upper bound, for fixed d, is the Johnson bound. We give a new upper bound which is at least as good as the Johnson bound for all values of n and d, and for each d there are infinitely many values of n for which the new bound is better than the Johnson bound. For small values of n and d, the best known method to obtain upper bounds on A(n,d) is linear programming. We give new inequalities for the linear programming and show that with these new inequalities some of the known bounds on A(n,d) for n⩽28 are improved