Intercalates and Discrepancy in Random Latin Squares

An intercalate in a Latin square is a $2\times2$ Latin subsquare. Let $N$ be the number of intercalates in a uniformly random $n\times n$ Latin square. We prove that asymptotically almost surely $N\ge\left(1-o\left(1\right)\right)\,n^{2}/4$, and that $\mathbb{E}N\le\left(1+o\left(1\right)\right)\,n^{2}/2$ (therefore asymptotically almost surely $N\le fn^{2}$ for any $f\to\infty$). This significantly improves the previous best lower and upper bounds. We also give an upper tail bound for the number of intercalates in two fixed rows of a random Latin square. In addition, we discuss a problem of Linial and Luria on low-discrepancy Latin squares

Low-Density Parity-Check Codes From Transversal Designs With Improved Stopping Set Distributions

This paper examines the construction of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes from transversal designs based on sets of mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS). By transferring the concept of configurations in combinatorial designs to the level of Latin squares, we thoroughly investigate the occurrence and avoidance of stopping sets for the arising codes. Stopping sets are known to determine the decoding performance over the binary erasure channel and should be avoided for small sizes. Based on large sets of simple-structured MOLS, we derive powerful constraints for the choice of suitable subsets, leading to improved stopping set distributions for the corresponding codes. We focus on LDPC codes with column weight 4, but the results are also applicable for the construction of codes with higher column weights. Finally, we show that a subclass of the presented codes has quasi-cyclic structure which allows low-complexity encoding.Comment: 11 pages; to appear in "IEEE Transactions on Communications

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