Algorithms and Computation in Mathematics Volume 15 Petteri Kaski Patric R.J. Ostergard Classification Algorithms for Codes and Designs \o! g) SpringerAuthors Petteri Kaski Department of Computer Science and Engineering Helsinki University of Technology P.O. Box 5400 02015 TKK Finland e-mail: petteri.kaski @tkk.fi Patric RJ. Ostergird Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering Helsinki University of Technology P.O. Box 3000 0201 TKK Finland e-mail: patric.ostergard @tkk.fi Library of Congress Control Number: 2005935445 Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 05-02, 0SBxx, 05CXx, 05E20, 51EXX, 68-02, 68Rxx, 94-02, 94Bxx ISSN 1431-1550 ISBN-10 3-540-28990-9 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York ‘This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concemed, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable for prosecution under the German Copyright Law. Springer is a part of Springer Science+Business Media springer.com © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005 Printed in The Netherlands ‘The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. inthis publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. ‘Typesetting: by the authors and TechBooks using a Springer ISIX macro package Cover design: design & production GmbH, Heidelberg Printed on acid-free paper SPIN: 1142784 46/TechBooks 5.432101 Introduction Combinatorial design theory (or just design theory) is a branch of discrete mathematics which originated in the design of statistical experiments for agri- culture and through generalization of various recreational problems. A combinatorial design can be described as an arrangement of a finite set of points into a finite collection of blocks with some prescribed properties. As an example (504, 561), the following famous recreational problem was posed by Thomas P. Kirkman in the Lady’s and Gentleman's Diary of 1850. Fifteen young ladies in a school walk out three abreast for seven days in succession: it is required to arrange them daily, so that no two walk twice abreast. A solution is given below. Dayl Day2 Day3 Day4 Day5 Day6 Day7 ABC AHI AJK ADE AFG ALM ANO DJN BEG BMO BLN BHJ BIK BDF EHM CMN CEF CIJ CLO CDG CHK FIO DKO DHL FKM DIM EJO EIL GKL FJL GIN GHO EKN FHN GJM A generalization of this problem to an arbitrary number of girls and days was unsolved for well over a hundred years until it was settled in the 1960s independently by Lu [380] and Ray-Chaudhuri and Wilson [499]. Design theory has strong connections [13, 89] to coding theory, a more re- cent branch of discrete mathematics, with origins in the engineering problem of finding good error-correcting and error-detecting codes for noisy communi- cation channels. It was the seminal work of Claude E. Shannon [530] in the middle of the 20th century that laid the foundations for the new fields of cod- ing theory and information theory, whose importance in the modern world shows no signs of declination. A code consists of a set of codewords, which are tuples with element taken from a prescribed set. Golay [209] and Hamming [251] found the first few