Constructions of difference covering arrays. (Q1421336)

A difference covering array with parameters \(k\), \(n\) and \(q\), or \(\text{DCA}( k,n;q)\) for short, over an abelian group \(G\) of order \(q\) is defined to be a \(k \times n\) array \((a_{ij})\) with entries \(a_{ij}\) (\(0 \leq i \leq k-1\), \(0 \leq j \leq n-1\)) from \(G\) such that, for any two distinct rows indexed \(t\) and \(h\), every element of \(G\) accurs in the corresponding list of differences \(\{a_{hj}-a_{tj} \mid j = 0,1,\ldots,n-1\}\) at least once. The paper describes a number of constructive techniques for DCAs. In particular, the author establishes the existence of a \(\text{DCA}(4,q+1;q)\) for every positive integer \(q\) with \(q \equiv 2 \pmod 4\).