New Classes of Partial Geometries and Their Associated LDPC Codes

The use of partial geometries to construct parity-check matrices for LDPC codes has resulted in the design of successful codes with a probability of error close to the Shannon capacity at bit error rates down to $10^{-15}$. Such considerations have motivated this further investigation. A new and simple construction of a type of partial geometries with quasi-cyclic structure is given and their properties are investigated. The trapping sets of the partial geometry codes were considered previously using the geometric aspects of the underlying structure to derive information on the size of allowable trapping sets. This topic is further considered here. Finally, there is a natural relationship between partial geometries and strongly regular graphs. The eigenvalues of the adjacency matrices of such graphs are well known and it is of interest to determine if any of the Tanner graphs derived from the partial geometries are good expanders for certain parameter sets, since it can be argued that codes with good geometric and expansion properties might perform well under message-passing decoding.Comment: 34 pages with single column, 6 figure

Reconstructing a generalized quadrangle from the Penttila–Williford 4-class association scheme

Penttila and Williford constructed a 4-class association scheme from a generalized quadrangle with a doubly subtended subquadrangle. We show that an association scheme with appropriate parameters and satisfying some assumption about maximal cliques must be the Penttila–Williford scheme

Ovoids and spreads of finite classical generalized hexagons and applications

One intuitively describes a generalized hexagon as a point-line geometry full of ordinary hexagons, but containing no ordinary n-gons for n<6. A generalized hexagon has order (s,t) if every point is on t+1 lines and every line contains s+1 points. The main result of my PhD Thesis is the construction of three new examples of distance-2 ovoids (a set of non-collinear points that is uniquely intersected by any chosen line) in H(3) and H(4), where H(q) belongs to a special class of order (q,q) generalized hexagons. One of these examples has lead to the construction of a new infinite class of two-character sets. These in turn give rise to new strongly regular graphs and new two-weight codes, which is why I dedicate a whole chapter on codes arising from small generalized hexagons. By considering the (0,1)-vector space of characteristic functions within H(q), one obtains a one-to-one correspondence between such a code and some substructure of the hexagon. A regular substructure can be viewed as the eigenvector of a certain (0,1)-matrix and the fact that eigenvectors of distinct eigenvalues have to be orthogonal often yields exact values for the intersection number of the according substructures. In my thesis I reveal some unexpected results to this particular technique. Furthermore I classify all distance-2 and -3 ovoids (a maximal set of points mutually at maximal distance) within H(3). As such we obtain a geometrical interpretation of all maximal subgroups of G2(3), a geometric construction of a GAB, the first sporadic examples of ovoid-spread pairings and a transitive 1-system of Q(6,3). Research on derivations of this 1-system was followed by an investigation of common point reguli of different hexagons on the same Q(6,q), with nice applications as a result. Of these, the most important is the alternative construction of the Hölz design and a subdesign. Furthermore we theoretically prove that the Hölz design on 28 points only contains Hermitian and Ree unitals (previously shown by Tonchev by computer). As these Hölz designs are one-point extensions of generalized quadrangles, we dedicate a final chapter to the characterization of the affine extension of H(2) using a combinatorial property