From Block Designs to Codes to Crypto and Back Again
Abstract
This article reviews Edward Dawson’s contribution to research linking design theory to the study of codes and cryptosystems. We will briefly discuss Dawson’s work on binary codes associated with biplanes and ternary codes associated with Hadamard matrices. Then the focus will be on applying Latin squares and balanced incomplete block designs in the study of s-boxes and secret sharing schemes. The article concludes with some open questions.
