A Hypergraph Approach to the Identifying Parent Property: The Case of Multiple Parents

Let C be a code of length n over an alphabet of q letters. A codeword y is called a descendant of a set of t codewords x sup 1,..., x sup t if y sub i epsilon {x sup 1 sub i,...,x sup t sub i} for all i = 1,...,n. A code is said to have the identifiable parent property if for any n-word that is a descendant of at most t parents it is possible to identify at least one of them. We prove that for any t