Maximum Kirkman signal sets for synchronous uni-polar multi-user communication systems (Q1581788)

The authors prove, by construction, the existence of Kirkman signal sets with \(k=3\) and \(m\) as large as possible. Such objects are important in optical transmission and radio communication and can be described as follows. There are \(s\) users and each requires a signal set consisting of \(m\) binary codewords of length \(v\). All codewords have the same weight which is three in the studied case. Furthermore, the Hamming distance of two codewords within one user's signal set is six, whereas the Hamming distance of codewords from different signal sets is at least four. Thus a signal set \(\text{SS}(v,s,m)\) is a collection of \(s\) sets of \(m\) codewords of length \(v\) satisfying the condition above. A Kirman signal set, \(\text{KSS}(v,m)\), is an \(\text{SS}(v,s,m)\) in which \(s\) realises the maximum as a function of \(v\) and \(m\). Obviously, \(1\leq m\leq\lfloor v/3\rfloor\). When \(m\) is as large as possible, the \(\text{KSS}(v,m)\) is called maximum and such sets are constructed.