Hadamard full propelinear codes of type Q; rank and kernel

Hadamard full propelinear codes (\(\mathrm{HFP}\)-codes) are introduced and their equivalence with Hadamard groups is proven; on the other hand, the equivalence of Hadamard groups, relative (4n, 2, 4n, 2n)-difference sets in a group, and cocyclic Hadamard matrices, is already known. We compute the available values for the rank and dimension of the kernel of \(\mathrm{HFP}\)-codes of type Q and we show that the dimension of the kernel is always 1 or 2. We also show that when the dimension of the kernel is 2 then the dimension of the kernel of the transposed code is 1 (so, both codes are not equivalent). Finally, we give a construction method such that from an \(\mathrm{HFP}\)-code of length 4n, dimension of the kernel \(k=2\), and maximum rank \(r=2n\), we obtain an \(\mathrm{HFP}\)-code of double length 8n, dimension of the kernel \(k=2\), and maximum rank \(r=4n\).