Explicit constructions of NMDS self-dual codes

Near maximum distance separable (NMDS) codes are important in finite geometry and coding theory. Self-dual codes are closely related to combinatorics, lattice theory, and have important application in cryptography. In this paper, we construct a class of q-ary linear codes and prove that they are either MDS or NMDS which depends on certain zero-sum condition. In the NMDS case, we provide an effective approach to construct NMDS self-dual codes which largely extend known parameters of such codes. In particular, we proved that for square q, almost q/8 NMDS self-dual q-ary codes can be constructed.