Improved lower bound for locating-dominating codes in binary Hamming spaces (Q2068380)

Let \(C\subseteq \mathbb{F}_2^n\) be binary code. For every \(u\in\mathbb{F}_2^n\) the \(I\)-set of \(u\) with respect to \(C\) is the set of codewords in \(C\) whose Hamming distance from \(u\) is at most \(1\). The code \(C\) is called dominating if for every \(u\in \mathbb{F}_2^n\), the \(I\)-set of \(u\) is nonempty. Moreover, \(C\) is locating-dominating if it is dominating and for every \(u,v\in \mathbb{F}_2^n\setminus C\) the \(I\)-sets of \(u\) and \(v\) with respect to \(C\) are distinct. Locating-dominating codes have been introduced in the '80s and one of the motivations to study them is for their application to sensor networks. This paper is dealing with finding the smallest possible locating-dominating codes in the Hamming space \( \mathbb{F}_2^n\). The authors combine different approaches in order to provide improvements on the existing lower bound on the smallest possible cardinality of locating-dominating codes for every value of \(n\geq 10\). In particular, in the case \(n=11\), they get as lower bound the value \(317\), which is extremely close to the existing upper bound \(320\).