A feasibility approach for constructing combinatorial designs of circulant type

In this work, we propose an optimization approach for constructing various classes of circulant combinatorial designs that can be defined in terms of autocorrelations. The problem is formulated as a so-called feasibility problem having three sets, to which the Douglas-Rachford projection algorithm is applied. The approach is illustrated on three different classes of circulant combinatorial designs: circulant weighing matrices, D-optimal matrices, and Hadamard matrices with two circulant cores. Furthermore, we explicitly construct two new circulant weighing matrices, a $CW(126,64)$ and a $CW(198,100)$, whose existence was previously marked as unresolved in the most recent version of Strassler's table

On ZZt × ZZ2 2-cocyclic Hadamard matrices

A characterization of ZZt × ZZ22 -cocyclic Hadamard matrices is described, de- pending on the notions of distributions, ingredients and recipes. In particular, these notions lead to the establishment of some bounds on the number and distribution of 2-coboundaries over ZZt × ZZ22 to use and the way in which they have to be combined in order to obtain a ZZt × ZZ22 -cocyclic Hadamard matrix. Exhaustive searches have been performed, so that the table in p. 132 in [4] is corrected and completed. Furthermore, we identify four different operations on the set of coboundaries defining ZZt × ZZ22 -cocyclic matrices, which preserve orthogonality. We split the set of Hadamard matrices into disjoint orbits, de- fine representatives for them and take advantage of this fact to compute them in an easier way than the usual purely exhaustive way, in terms of diagrams. Let H be the set of cocyclic Hadamard matrices over ZZt × ZZ22 having a sym- metric diagram. We also prove that the set of Williamson type matrices is a subset of H of size |H| t .Junta de Andalucía FQM-01

Cooperative Local Repair in Distributed Storage

Erasure-correcting codes, that support local repair of codeword symbols, have attracted substantial attention recently for their application in distributed storage systems. This paper investigates a generalization of the usual locally repairable codes. In particular, this paper studies a class of codes with the following property: any small set of codeword symbols can be reconstructed (repaired) from a small number of other symbols. This is referred to as cooperative local repair. The main contribution of this paper is bounds on the trade-off of the minimum distance and the dimension of such codes, as well as explicit constructions of families of codes that enable cooperative local repair. Some other results regarding cooperative local repair are also presented, including an analysis for the well-known Hadamard/Simplex codes.Comment: Fixed some minor issues in Theorem 1, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, December 201

A Heuristic Procedure with Guided Reproduction for Constructing Cocyclic Hadamard Matrices

A genetic algorithm for constructing cocyclic Hadamard matrices over a given group is described. The novelty of this algorithm is the guided heuristic procedure for reproduction, instead of the classical crossover and mutation operators. We include some runs of the algorithm for dihedral groups, which are known to give rise to a large amount of cocyclic Hadamard matrices.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MTM2008-06578Junta de Andalucía FQM–296Junta de Andalucía P07-FQM-0298

Fractional repetition codes with flexible repair from combinatorial designs

Fractional repetition (FR) codes are a class of regenerating codes for distributed storage systems with an exact (table-based) repair process that is also uncoded, i.e., upon failure, a node is regenerated by simply downloading packets from the surviving nodes. In our work, we present constructions of FR codes based on Steiner systems and resolvable combinatorial designs such as affine geometries, Hadamard designs and mutually orthogonal Latin squares. The failure resilience of our codes can be varied in a simple manner. We construct codes with normalized repair bandwidth ($\beta$) strictly larger than one; these cannot be obtained trivially from codes with $\beta = 1$. Furthermore, we present the Kronecker product technique for generating new codes from existing ones and elaborate on their properties. FR codes with locality are those where the repair degree is smaller than the number of nodes contacted for reconstructing the stored file. For these codes we establish a tradeoff between the local repair property and failure resilience and construct codes that meet this tradeoff. Much of prior work only provided lower bounds on the FR code rate. In our work, for most of our constructions we determine the code rate for certain parameter ranges.Comment: 27 pages in IEEE two-column format. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (to appear

Low-Density Arrays of Circulant Matrices: Rank and Row-Redundancy Analysis, and Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

This paper is concerned with general analysis on the rank and row-redundancy of an array of circulants whose null space defines a QC-LDPC code. Based on the Fourier transform and the properties of conjugacy classes and Hadamard products of matrices, we derive tight upper bounds on rank and row-redundancy for general array of circulants, which make it possible to consider row-redundancy in constructions of QC-LDPC codes to achieve better performance. We further investigate the rank of two types of construction of QC-LDPC codes: constructions based on Vandermonde Matrices and Latin Squares and give combinatorial expression of the exact rank in some specific cases, which demonstrates the tightness of the bound we derive. Moreover, several types of new construction of QC-LDPC codes with large row-redundancy are presented and analyzed.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1004.118

Targeted Undersmoothing

This paper proposes a post-model selection inference procedure, called targeted undersmoothing, designed to construct uniformly valid confidence sets for a broad class of functionals of sparse high-dimensional statistical models. These include dense functionals, which may potentially depend on all elements of an unknown high-dimensional parameter. The proposed confidence sets are based on an initially selected model and two additionally selected models, an upper model and a lower model, which enlarge the initially selected model. We illustrate application of the procedure in two empirical examples. The first example considers estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects using data from the Job Training Partnership Act of 1982, and the second example looks at estimating profitability from a mailing strategy based on estimated heterogeneous treatment effects in a direct mail marketing campaign. We also provide evidence on the finite sample performance of the proposed targeted undersmoothing procedure through a series of simulation experiments

Rooted Trees Searching for Cocyclic Hadamard Matrices over D4t

A new reduction on the size of the search space for cocyclic Hadamard matrices over dihedral groups D4t is described, in terms of the so called central distribution. This new search space adopt the form of a forest consisting of two rooted trees (the vertices representing subsets of coboundaries) which contains all cocyclic Hadamard matrices satisfying the constraining condition. Experimental calculations indicate that the ratio between the number of constrained cocyclic Hadamard matrices and the size of the constrained search space is greater than the usual ratio.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MTM2008-06578Junta de Andalucía FQM–296Junta de Andalucía P07-FQM-0298

Supplementary difference sets with symmetry for Hadamard matrices

First we give an overview of the known supplementary difference sets (SDS) (A_i), i=1..4, with parameters (n;k_i;d), where k_i=|A_i| and each A_i is either symmetric or skew and k_1 + ... + k_4 = n + d. Five new Williamson matrices over the elementary abelian groups of order 25, 27 and 49 are constructed. New examples of skew Hadamard matrices of order 4n for n=47,61,127 are presented. The last of these is obtained from a (127,57,76)-difference family that we have constructed. An old non-published example of G-matrices of order 37 is also included.Comment: 16 pages, 2 tables. A few minor changes are made. The paper will appear in Operators and Matrice