Subspace Packings -- Constructions and Bounds

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of subspace packings in Grassmannian spaces, providing bounds on their sizes and analyzing their properties, which are relevant for network coding and combinatorial design theory.

Contribution

It introduces the study of subspace packings as a new family of $q$-analogs of block designs, deriving bounds and analyzing their properties for the first time.

Findings

Derived lower and upper bounds on the size of subspace packings.

Analyzed the bounds and identified key open problems.

Connected subspace packings to network coding applications.

Abstract

The Grassmannian $\mathcal{G}_q(n,k)$ is the set of all $k$-dimensional subspaces of the vector space $\mathbb{F}_q^n$. K\"{o}tter and Kschischang showed that codes in Grassmannian space can be used for error-correction in random network coding. On the other hand, these codes are $q$-analogs of codes in the Johnson scheme, i.e., constant dimension codes. These codes of the Grassmannian $\mathcal{G}_q(n,k)$ also form a family of $q$-analogs of block designs and they are called subspace designs. In this paper, we examine one of the last families of $q$-analogs of block designs which was not considered before. This family, called subspace packings, is the $q$-analog of packings, and was considered recently for network coding solution for a family of multicast networks called the generalized combination networks. A subspace packing $t$-$(n,k,\lambda)_q$ is a set $\mathcal{S}$ of $k$-subspaces from $\mathcal{G}_q(n,k)$ such that each $t$-subspace of $\mathcal{G}_q(n,t)$ is contained in at most $\lambda$ elements of $\mathcal{S}$. The goal of this work is to consider the largest size of such subspace packings. We derive a sequence of lower and upper bounds on the maximum size of such packings, analyse these bounds, and identify the important problems for further research in this area.