On the number of information symbols in difference-set cyclic codes

The concept of a difference-set cyclic code has been described previously. It was shown that such a code is almost as powerful as a Bose-Chaudhuri code and considerably simpler to implement. It is the purpose of this paper to determine some of the more important properties of this code and its dual code (cf. Sec. IV). It may be pointed out that the problems we consider are equivalent to determining certain properties of incidence matrices associated with a class of balanced incomplete block designs formed from simple difference sets.