A Graham-Sloane type construction for \(s\)-surjective matrices (Q685994)

An \(m \times n\) matrix \(A\) over \(\mathbb{Z}_ q\) is called \(s\)-surjective if it has the following property: if we choose any \(s\) columns \(i_ 1,\dots,i_ s\) and any \(s\)-tuple \((a_ 1,\dots,a_ s)\) of integers modulo \(q\) then there is a row of \(A\) which has \(a_ j\) in the column \(i_ j\) for every \(j=1,\dots,s\). The paper deals with the question: What is the smallest possible number \(ms_ q(n,s)\) of rows in an \(s\)- surjective matrix over \(\mathbb{Z}_ q\) with \(n\) columns? It is shown that \(ms_ q(n,n-s) \leq s^ sq^{n-s}\).