Advances in the merit factor problem for binary sequences (Q1946741)

For a binary sequence \(A = (a_0,a_1,\ldots,a_{t-1})\), \(a_j\in\{-1,1\}\), of length \(t\) the aperiodic autocorrelation at shift \(u\), \(0\leq u\leq t-1\), is defined as \(c_u = \sum_{j=0}^{t-u-1}a_ja_{j+u}\) and the merit factor of \(A\) is defined as \(F(A) = t^2/(2\sum_{u=1}^{t-1}c_u^2)\). In [``Littlewood polynomials with small \(L^4\) norm'', Adv. Math. 241, 127--136 (2013; Zbl 1291.30027)] the authors showed that a certain family of binary sequences attains an asymptotic merit factor of \(6.342061\ldots\) disproving a conjecture that 6 is asymptotically the largest possible merit factor for binary sequences. In this article the authors further develop their methods to deal with other classes of sequence families like \(m\)-sequences, Legendre and Jacobi sequences, and sequences obtained from them with the periodic and negaperiodic constructions in [\textit{M. G. Parker}, Applied algebra, algebraic algorithms and error-correcting codes -- AAECC-14, Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 2227, 200--209 (2001; Zbl 1057.94510)]. With this, several previous numerical results are explained and a series of conjectures from previous works are proved. The paper contains comprehensive information on currently known results on the asymptotic merit factor. As one of the interesting results it is shown that the largest known asymptotic merit factor for a family of binary sequences can be achieved by families of skew-symmetric binary sequences, i.e., sequences \((a_0,a_1,\ldots,a_{2s})\) of odd length \(2s+1\) satisfying \(a_{s+j} = (-1)^ja_{s-j}\), \(1\leq j\leq s\). This supports a conjecture of \textit{M. J. E. Golay} [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 23, 43--51 (1977; Zbl 0359.94019)].