See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/319292027

Hamming Graphs and Permutation Codes

Conference Paper · August 2017

DOI: 10.1109/MCSI.2017.35

CITATIONS READS
5 990

2 authors:

Janos Barta Roberto Montemanni

University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
17 PUBLICATIONS 186 CITATIONS 208 PUBLICATIONS 4,038 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Permutation codes View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Janos Barta on 17 February 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 2017 Fourth International Conference on Mathematics and Computers in Sciences and in Industry
Hamming Graphs and Permutation Codes
János Barta
Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence
IDSIA - USI/SUPSI
Galleria 2, 6928 Manno, Switzerland
{janos.barta, roberto.montemanni}@supsi.ch
Abstract—A permutation code can be represented as a graph,
in which the nodes correspond to the permutation codewords
and the weights on the edges are the Hamming distances
between the codewords. Graphs belonging to this class are
called permutation Hamming graphs. This paper explores the
Maximum Permutation Code Problem (MPCP), a well-known
optimization problem in coding theory, by means of a graph
theoretical approach. Permutation Hamming graphs turn out to
satisfy strong regularity properties, such as vertex transitivity and
r-partiteness. In addition, exact formulas for the degree of the
vertices and for the number of the edges are presented. Further-
more, a remarkable similarity between permutation Hamming
graphs and Turán graphs is enlightened. The new link with Turán
graphs might help to improve current results on the MPCP.
Index Terms—graph theory; combinatorics; coding theory;
Hamming graphs; Turán graphs
I. I NTRODUCTION
In recent years permutation codes have been extensively
investigated, mainly because of potential applications to power
line communication (see [7], [14] and [22]) and not least
also because of the mathematical interest and difficulty of the
related combinatorial optimization problems. As one of the
main problems in power line communication is represented by
interference due to narrow band noise of electrical equipment
or magnetic fields and white Gaussian noise, suitable error-
correcting coding algorithms are required. One well-known
modulation technique for dealing with interference is M-ary
frequency shift keying, a protocol for signal transmission in
which a finite number of frequencies is used to modulate
the signal. As shown in [6], permutation codes arise as a
suitable mathematical framework for M-ary frequency shift
keying. Apart from power line communication permutation
codes have also been studied for the design of multilevel flash
memories and for coding problems with block ciphers (see
for instance [8] and [17]). It is well-known that the error-
correcting ability of permutation codes is directly related to
the minimum Hamming distance between the codewords (see
[6] and [15]): the more is the minimum Hamming distance
between the codewords, the more transmission errors can
be detected and corrected. This is the reason why we are
interested in the maximum permutation code problem (MPCP),
that is how many permutations of length n can be included in
a code in such a way that the Hamming distance between any
pair of codewords is greater than or equal to a given value d.
The MPCP has been tackled with very different mathematical
approaches such as linear programming ([4], [24]), group
978-1-5386-2820-1/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/MCSI.2017.35
Roberto Montemanni
theory ([9], [11], [13], [6]), branch and bound methods ([1],
[18] [19], [2]) as well as heuristic algorithms ([23], [16], [3]).
A large part of the MPCP solvers developed in recent years is
based on maximum clique algorithms. In fact any MPCP can
be reformulated as an equivalent graph theoretical problem:
let’s assign to each permutation a vertex of a graph and join
a pair of codewords by an edge whenever their Hamming
distance is greater than or equal d. The graph obtained is a
so-called Hamming graph, more precisely a permutation Ham-
ming graph. It is straightforward that the MPCP is equivalent
to the optimization problem of finding the largest possible
complete subgraph of the corresponding Hamming graph, ie
solving the maximum clique problem on it. So far maximum
clique problems on Hamming graphs have been solved by
means of classical or adapted maximum clique algorithms
(see [5], [21], [23], [20]) without fully exploiting the peculiar
regularity properties of Hamming graphs. Moreover, as pointed
out in [3], optimal permutation codes and so the equivalent
maximum cliques tend also to be highly regular. Therefore it
might be useful to gain a deeper knowledge on the properties
of permutation Hamming graphs. In this paper we investigate
the graph theoretical characteristics of permutation Hamming
graphs, in order to better understand, how a maximum clique
algorithm specially designed for permutation Hamming graphs
should look like.
II. P ERMUTATIONS AND H AMMING GRAPHS
The MPCP can be expressed formally as follows. Let Ωn be
the set of all possible permutations of the n-tuple of integers
x0 = [0, 1, ..., n − 1]. An element of Ωn is a codeword of
length n and a subset of Ωn is a permutation code. The
Hamming distance dH (x, y) between codewords x and y is the
number of components that differ in the two codewords. Given
a codeword length n and a Hamming distance d, the MPCP is
the problem of finding a largest code C ⊆ Ωn , such that for
any pair of codewords x, y ∈ C it holds dH (x, y) ≥ d. We
will refer to this problem as an (n, d)-problem. The Hamming
graphs corresponding to a given (n, d)-problem can now be
introduced in a more formal way.
Definition 1. Let H(n, d) be the graph defined on the vertex
set VH = Ωn with the set of edges EH , in which two nodes
are adjacent iff their Hamming distance is at least d. We refer
to the graph H(n, d) as the permutation Hamming graph of
size n and distance d.
154
Definition 2. Let G(n, d) be the subgraph of the Hamming
graph H(n, d) defined on the same vertex set VG = Ωn with
the set of edges EG ⊆ EH , in which two nodes are adjacent
iff their Hamming distance is exactly equal to d. We refer to
this graph as the d-level permutation Hamming graph of size
n.
It is easy to see that the Hamming graph H(n, d) can be
obtained by overlapping the t-level Hamming graphs G(n, t),
∀ d ≤ t ≤ n.
III. N OTATION AND BASIC GRAPH THEORETICAL
CONCEPTS
In order to analyze the properties of Hamming graphs some
basic graph theoretical notation has to be introduced. Let
G(V, E) be a graph with the set of vertices (or nodes) V
and the set of edges E. Where a distinction is needed, we
adopt the notation VG and EG , respectively. For any vertex
x ∈ V the degree deg(x) represents the number of edges
incident to the node x. An important indicator of a graph
G is its maximum degree Δ(G) = maxx∈V deg(x). Two
vertices x, y ∈ V are called adjacent (denoted by x ∼ y)
iff an edge of the graph G connects them, otherwise they are
called independent. A complete graph on r vertices Kr , is a
graph in which all vertices are pairwise adjacent, ie x ∼ y,
∀x, y ∈ VK . Usually, a complete subgraph of a graph G is
called a clique and the clique number ω(G) of a graph G is
the size (number of nodes) of the largest clique in G. The
counterpart of the clique number is the independence number
α(G), that is the maximum number of pairwise independent
nodes in G. There is a simple link between the clique number
and the independence number: ω(G) = α(Ḡ), where Ḡ is the
complement of G. The complement Ḡ is the graph on the
same vertices of G, where two nodes are adjacent iff they
are independent in G. As it will be discussed in the next
section, vertex transitivity is a crucial property of permutation
Hamming graphs. In order to define vertex transitivity we first
need to talk about automorphisms. An automorphism of a
graph G(V, E) is a bijection ϕ : V → V such that for any pair
of nodes x, y ∈ V it holds x ∼ y ⇔ ϕ(x) ∼ ϕ(y). In other
terms a graph automorphism is a permutation of the vertices
that preserves the adjacency. The set of automorphisms of a
graph G forms a group and it is usually denoted by Aut(G).
Definition 3. A graph G(V, E) is vertex transitive iff for any
pair of nodes x, y ∈ V there exists an automorphism ϕ ∈
Aut(G) such that ϕ(x) = y.
In simple words, vertex transitive means that the graph looks
the same, in terms of connected edges, from the point of view
of any node, just like a regular polyhedron. The following
theorem establishes a fundamental relationship between α(G)
and ω(G) for vertex transitive graphs (see also [12] and [10]).
Theorem 1. Let G(V, E) be a vertex transitive graph. Then
α(G) · ω(G) ≤ |V |. (1)
155
IV. P ROPERTIES OF PERMUTATION H AMMING GRAPHS
A basic issue about the structure of a graph is the degree of
its vertices and the total number of edges. One of the results
presented in this paper are exact formulas for the degree of the
nodes and for the number of edges of permutation Hamming
graphs G(n, d) and H(n, d). We renounce to a rigorous proof
with all mathematical details, because it would require a more
technical and longer article. Instead we provide a trace of the
sequence of the principal ideas.
A. The d-neighbourhood of a permutation codeword
Definition 4. Let x be a codeword in Ωn . We define the d-
neighbourhood of x as the set Udn (x) = {x ∈ Ωn |dH (x, x ) =
d}, that is the set of all codewords at distance d from x.
The core of the reasoning is solving the following combi-
natorial problem: how many permutation codewords of length
d are exactly at Hamming distance d from a given codeword
x ∈ Ωd ? In other terms, we are interested in the cardinality
of the set Udd (x). This problem has been solved by means
of a combinatorial approach based on the inclusion-exclusion
principle (see also [13]) and it leads to the following result.
Proposition 1. Let x be a codeword in Ωd . The number of
codewords in the d-neighbourhood of x is equal to

d
(−1)k
|Udd (x)| = d! · . (2)
k!
k=0
As an example |U44 (x)| = 4!(1 − 1 + 12 − 16 + 24 1
) = 9
and in fact for any codeword in Ω4 there are 9 codewords
at Hamming distance 4: for instance the 4-neighbourhood of
x = [0123] is the set U44 (x) = {[1032], [1230], [1302], [2031],
[2301], [2310], [3012], [3201], [3210]}. Considering that equa-
tion (2) holds for any codeword x ∈ Ωd , the notation
Udd (x) can be simplified to Udd and in general Udn (x) to Udn .
Again a combinatorial argument leads from equation (2) to a
generalized formula for an arbitrary codeword length n.
Proposition 2. Let x be a codeword in Ωn . The number of
codewords in the d-neighbourhood of x is equal to
n!  (−1)k
d
|Udn (x)| = . (3)
(n − d)! k!
k=0
As an example |U34 | = 4!(1 − 1 + 12 − 16 ) = 8 and
in fact for x = [0123] the 3-neighbourhood is U34 (x) =
{[0231], [0312], [2130], [3102], [1320], [3021], [1203], [2013]}.
Note that formula (3) is extremely interesting from a
mathematical point of view. Indeed, it allows to express |Udn |
in a recursive form.
Property 1.
n
|Udn | = · |Udn−1 | , ∀ n > d (4)
(n − d)
From Property 1 it follows immediately
Property 2. Theorem 1 can now be applied to permutation Hamming
  graphs. The result is a basic relation between the independence
n
|Udn (x)| = |Udd (x)| , ∀ n ≥ d. (5) number and the clique number of G(n, d) and H(n, d).
d
B. Degree and number of edges Corollary 1. The Hamming graphs G(n, d) and H(n, d)
satisfy the following inequalities:
Since the degree of the nodes of the d-level Hamming
graph G(n, d) is nothing else than the cardinality of the d- α(G(n, d)) · ω(G(n, d)) ≤ n! (10)
neighbourhood Udn , by Proposition 2 it follows
α(H(n, d)) · ω(H(n, d)) ≤ n! . (11)
n! 
d
(−1)k
Δ(G(n, d)) = deg(x) = , ∀x ∈ VG . As an example in the case n = 4 and d = 3,
(n − d)! k! α(H(n, d))ω(H(n, d)) = 2 · 12 = 24 ≤ 24 = n!.
k=0
(6) The inequalities (10) and (11) can be seen as a starting point
Since the number of the edges of G(n, d) is equal to the sum for the development of bounds of the clique number.
of the degrees of the nodes divided by 2
V. H AMMING VS T UR ÁN
n! n!  (−1)kd
In this section we discover another important feature of
|EG(n,d) | = · . (7)
2 (n − d)! k! permutation Hamming graphs, namely that they are regular
k=0
r-partite graphs, very similar to the well-known Turán graphs.
As already mentioned, the Hamming graph H(n, d) can
be generated by overlapping the t-level Hamming graphs A. Partition of Hamming graphs
G(n, t), ∀t ≥ d. Therefore the degree of the nodes and The basic idea is quite simple: we partition the vertex set
the number of edges of the Hamming graph H(n, d) can be Ωn in independent subsets (classes) of the same size.
deduced by summing up the formulas (6) and (7):
  Definition 5. Let CI be the class of all codewords in Ωn

n
n!  (−1)k
t
having the first (n − d + 1) entries equal to the components
Δ(H(n, d)) = deg(x) = (8) of the (n − d + 1)-tuple I = (i1 , i2 , . . . , in−d+1 ) of distinct
(n − t)! k!
t=d k=0
indices ik ∈ {0, . . . , n − 1}.
and  
n! 
n
n!  (−1)k
t As an example in the case n = 4 and d = 3 the index vector
|EH(n,d) | = . (9) I1 = (0, 1) induces the class CI1 = {[0123], [0132]}, whereas
2 (n − t)! k!
t=d k=0 I2 = (1, 3) induces CI2 = {[1302], [1320]}. It is easy to verify
Tables I and II report the exact number of edges of the that the classes CI are independent subsets of the vertex set
Hamming graphs G(n, d), respectively H(n, d), for n ≤ 8, Ωn . In fact, according to the definition, there are at most (d−1)
calculated by means of the formulas (7) and (9). Formulas differing components in the codewords belonging to the same
(6) and (8) tell us that the degree of the vertices of G(n, d) class, which means that they are pairwise independent. Note
and H(n, d) is a constant of each graph. Therefore we that the classes CI have all the same size |CI | = (d − 1)!,
can conclude that permutation Hamming graphs G(n, d) and because the number of free components is equal to (d − 1).
H(n, d) are regular graphs. Moreover, the classes CI form a disjoint partition of Ωn , since
each codeword belongs to exactly one of them. Summarizing,
C. Vertex transitivity we can conclude that both graphs G(n, d) and H(n, d) are r-
Vertex transitivity reinforces considerably the regularity of partite graphs, where r = (d−1)!
n!
is the number of the classes
a graph based on the constant degree of its vertices. In the and (d − 1)! is their size. The graph H(4, 3), for instance, is
following lemma we prove that permutation Hamming graphs an r-partite graph with 12 classes, containing 2 vertices each.
are vertex transitive.
VI. T UR ÁN GRAPHS
Lemma 1. The permutation Hamming graph H(n, d) and the
What is the maximum number of edges for a graph with n
d-level permutation Hamming graph G(n, d) are both vertex
nodes, such that it does not contain a Kr+1 , that is a complete
transitive.
subgraph of order r + 1? The Hungarian mathematician Pál
Proof. For any pair of nodes u, v ∈ Ωn there exists exactly Turán gave the answer to this problem in 1941 with a re-
one permutation π, such that π(u) = v. The permutation π is markable theorem, known under the name of Turán’s theorem.
an automorphism of the graphs H(n, d), respectively G(n, d), Basically Turán’s theorem states that there is a particular
because it is a bijection from Ωn to itself and it preserves type of graphs, the so called Turán graphs, satisfying the
the Hamming distances. In other terms dH (π(x), π(y)) = maximality requirement of the problem. A Turán graph Tr (n)
dH (x, y), ∀x, y ∈ Ωn , which means that π(x) ∼ π(y) ⇔ x ∼ is a complete r-partite graph on n vertices, where the size
y. Since such an automorphism exists for any pair of nodes of the classes is as equal as possible (see [10]). Since in our
u, v ∈ Ωn , it follows that the graphs G(n, d) and H(n, d) are particular case the number of vertices is n! and r = (d−1)! n!

vertex transitive. always divides n!, we can focus on regular Turán graphs

156
 TABLE I
N UMBER OF EDGES OF G(n, d) FOR n ≤ 8

n\d 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2 1
3 9 6
4 72 96 108
5 600 1200 2700 2640
6 5400 14400 48600 95040 95400
7 52920 176400 793800 2328480 4674600 4672080
8 564480 2257920 12700800 49674240 149587200 299013120 299033280

TABLE II
N UMBER OF EDGES OF H(n, d) FOR n ≤ 8

n\d 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2 1
3 15 6
4 276 204 108
5 7140 6540 5340 2640
6 258840 253440 239040 190440 95400
7 12698280 12645360 12468960 11675160 9346680 4672080
8 812831040 812266560 810008640 797307840 747633600 598046400 299033280

Tr (n!), where all the classes have the same size. It is not
difficult to calculate that the number of edges of Tr (n!) is
n!
|ETr (n!) | = (n! − (d − 1)!). (12)
2
Summarizing, permutation Hamming graphs G(n, d) and
H(n, d) turn out to be vertex transitive, regular r-partite
subgraphs of the corresponding Turán graph Tr (n!), where
r = (d−1)!
n!
. As Turán’s theorem asserts the Turán graph Tr (n!)
is the graph with the maximal number of edges with the clique
number equal to r. Therefore, for its subgraphs G(n, d) and
H(n, d) the following equations hold:
n!
ω(G(n, d)) ≤ (13)
(d − 1)!
n!
ω(H(n, d)) ≤ . (14)
(d − 1)!
Equations (13) and (14) are well-known clique number
bounds for permutation Hamming graphs. It is interesting to
remark that in some cases formula (14) holds as an equality.
The clique number of H(4, 3), for example, is ω(H(4, 3)) =
12 = 4!2! . Since H(4, 3) is 12-partite, it means that, similarly
to the Turán graph T12 (24), a maximum clique of H(4, 3) has
one vertex in each class. However, there are other cases, where
this does not happen. For instance, H(6, 5) has 30 classes of
24 elements each, but the clique number of H(6, 5) is only
18.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper permutation codes have been investigated from
a graph theoretical point of view. In particular, the properties
of the corresponding permutation Hamming graphs have been
studied. The knowledge gained about this class of graphs
includes exact formulas for the degree of the vertices and for
the number of the edges, vertex transitivity, and partitioning
properties. Especially the affinity between permutation Ham-
ming graphs and Turán graphs might open a promising way
towards new bounds, or maybe even exact formulas for the
clique number of Hamming graphs.
R EFERENCES
[1] Barta J., Montemanni R. and Smith D.H.: A branch and bound ap-
proach to permutation codes. Proceedings of the IEEE 2nd International
Conference of Information and Communication Technology - ICOICT,
187–192 (2014).
[2] Barta J., Montemanni R. and Smith D.H.: Permutation Codes via Frag-
mentation of Group Orbits, Proceedings of the IEEE 3rd International
Conference of Information and Communication Technology - ICOICT,
39–44, 2015.
[3] Barta J., Montemanni R. and Smith D.H.: Packing regularity of permu-
tation codes, Lecture notes in management science. Proceedings of the
8th International Conference on Applied Operational Research - ICAOR,
(8) 86-92 (2016).
[4] Bogaerts M.: New upper bounds for the size of permutation codes via
linear programming. The El. Jour. of Combinatorics. 17(#R135) (2010).
[5] Carraghan R. and Pardalos P.M.: An exact algorithm for the maximum
clique problem. Operations Research Letters, 9 375–382 (1990).
[6] Chu W., Colbourn C.J. and Dukes P.: Constructions for permutation
codes in powerline communications. Designs, Codes and Cryptography
32, 51–64 (2004).
[7] Colbourn C.J., Kløve T. and Ling A.C.H.: Permutation arrays for
powerline communication and mutually orthogonal latin squares. IEEE
Trans. Inform. Theory 50, 1289–1291 (2004).
[8] D.R. de la Torre, C.J. Colbourn and A.C.H. Ling, An application of
permutation arrays to block ciphers, Proceedings of the 31st South-
eastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and
Computing vol. 145, 5–7, 2000.
[9] Deza M. and Vanstone S.A.: Bounds for permutation arrays. J. Statist.
Plann. Inference 2 197–209 (1978).
[10] Diestel R.: Graph theory, Springer (2010).
[11] Dukes P. and Sawchuck N.: Bounds on permutation codes of distance
four. J. Algebr. Comb. 31 143–158 (2010).
[12] El Rouayheb S. and Georghiades C.N.: Graph theoretic methods in
coding theory. Book chapter in Classical, Semi-classical and quantum
noise, Springer (2012).
[13] Frankl P. and Deza M.: On maximal numbers of permutations with given
maximal or minimal distance. J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 22, 352–260
(1977).

157
 [14] Han Vinck A.J.: Coded modulation for power line communications.
A.E.Ü. Int. J. Electron. Commun. 54(1), 45–49 (2000).
[15] Hunczynska, S.: Powerline communications and the 36 officers problem.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 364, 3199–3214 (2006).
[16] Janiszczak I., Lempken W., Östergård P.R.J and Staszewski R.: Permuta-
tion codes invariant under isometries. Designs, Codes and Cryptography,
to appear.
[17] A. Jiang, R. Mateescu, M. Schwartz and J. Bruck, Rank modulation for
flash memories, Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on
Information Theory, 1731–1735, 2008.
[18] Montemanni R., Barta J. and Smith D.H.: Permutation codes: a branch
and bound approach. Advances in Applied and Pure Mathematics,
Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Pure Mathematics,
Applied Mathematics and Computational Methods - PMAMCM 2014,
86–90, Greece, 17-21,(2014).
[19] Montemanni R., Barta J. and Smith D.H.: Permutation codes: a new up-
per bound for M(7,5). Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference
on Informatics and Advanced Computing (ICIAC-14), Yingthawornsuk
and O. Adiguzel eds., Int. Academy of Engineers (IA-E), 1–3, (2014).
[20] Montemanni R., Barta J. and Smith D.H.: The design of permutation
codes via a specialized maximum clique algorithm. Proceedings of the
IEEE 2nd International Conference on Mathematics and Computers in
Science and Industry - MCSI (2015).
[21] Östergård P.R.J.: A fast algorithm for the maximum clique problem.
Discrete Applied Math. 120, 197–207 (2002).
[22] Pavlidou N., Han Vinck A.J., Yazdani J. and Honary B.: Power line com-
munications: state of the art and future trends. IEEE Communications
Magazine 41(4), 34–40 (April 2003).
[23] Smith D.H. and Montemanni R.: A new table of permutation codes.
Design, Codes and Cryptography 63(2), 241–253 (2012).
[24] Tarnanen H.: Upper bounds on permutation codes via linear program-
ming. European J. Combin. 20 101–114 (1999).

158

View publication stats