On the non-existence of perfect codes in the Niederreiter-Rosenbloom-Tsfasman metric

In this paper we consider codes in ${\mathbb{F}}_q^{s\times r}$ with packing radius $R$ regarding the NRT-metric (i.e. when the underlying poset is a disjoint union of chains with the same length) and we establish necessary condition on the parameters $s,r$ and $R$ for the existence of perfect codes. More explicitly, for $r,s\ge 2$ and $R\ge 1$ we prove that if there is a non-trivial perfect code then $(r+1)(R+1)\le rs$. We also explore a connection to the knapsack problem and establish a correspondence between perfect codes with $r>R$ and those with $r=R$. Using this correspondence we prove the non-existence of non-trivial perfect codes also for $s=R+2$.