Relative difference sets (Q5917788)

The authors rediscover the well-known existence of cyclic relative difference sets with parameters \((q + 1, 2, q, (q - 1)/2)\), where \(q\) is an odd prime power. The existence of this series (Theorem 2 in their paper) follows directly by applying the standard projection argument of \textit{J. E. H. Elliott} and \textit{A. T. Butson} [Relative difference sets, Ill. J. Math. 10, 517-531 (1966; Zbl 0145.01503)] to the well-known affine difference sets due to \textit{R. C. Bose} [An affine analogue of Singer's theorem, J. Indian Math. Soc., n. Ser. 6, 1-15 (1942; Zbl 0063.00542)] which are constructed in their Theorem 1 (which is incorrectly attributed to Elliott and Butson). For an explicit reference for the existence of these RDS, see e.g. Corollary 4.4 in the reviewer's paper ``On automorphism groups of divisible designs'' [Can. J. Math. 34, 257-297 (1982; Zbl 0465.05011)]. Of course, this result was known even earlier, since the relative difference sets in question are equivalent to negacyclic conference matrices which were studied by \textit{P. Delsarte}, \textit{J. M. Goethals} and \textit{J. J. Seidel} [Orthogonal matrices with zero diagonal. II., Can. J. Math. 23, 816-832 (1971; Zbl 0209.03703)]. The reviewer also fails to see any point in the proof provided for Theorem 1, since the construction of Bose's affine difference sets given there is certainly no simpler than other known proofs (if it is new at all).