Bounds and combinatorial structure of \((k,n)\) multi-receiver \(A\)-codes (Q1841526)

The model of \((k,n)\) multi-receiver \(A\)-codes generalizes the usual model of unconditionally secure authentication codes (\(A\)-codes) -- not only an outside opponent but also any \(k-1\) receivers (out of given \(n\) receivers) cannot cheat any other receiver. In the paper lower bounds on the cheating probabilities (Section 4) and the sizes of keys (Section 5) of \((k,n)\) multi-receiver \(A\)-codes are derived. These bounds are tight as shown by the scheme proposed by \textit{Y. Desmedt, Y. Frankel} and \textit{M. Yung} [Multi-receiver/multi-sender network security: Efficient authenticated multicast/feedback, IEEE Infocom'92, 2045-2054 (1992)] that meets all the bounds (thus it is optimal). In Section 6 the authors also introduce a notion of TWOOA, where TWOOA denotes a pair of orthogonal arrays that satisfy a certain condition. It is then shown that an optimum \((k,n)\) multi-receiver \(A\)-code is equivalent to a TWOOA.