The research of developing a general methodology for the construction of good
nonregular designs has been very active in the last decade. Recent research by
Xu and Wong [Statist. Sinica 17 (2007) 1191--1213] suggested a new class of
nonregular designs constructed from quaternary codes. This paper explores the
properties and uses of quaternary codes toward the construction of
quarter-fraction nonregular designs. Some theoretical results are obtained
regarding the aliasing structure of such designs. Optimal designs are
constructed under the maximum resolution, minimum aberration and maximum
projectivity criteria. These designs often have larger generalized resolution
and larger projectivity than regular designs of the same size. It is further
shown that some of these designs have generalized minimum aberration and
maximum projectivity among all possible designs.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOS656 the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org