Subspace packings: constructions and bounds

Grassmannian Gq (n, k) is the set of all k-dimensional subspaces of the vector space Fn q. Kotter 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 Gq (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,.) q is a set S of k-subspaces from Gq (n, k) such that each t-subspace of Gq (n, t) is contained in at most. elements of 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.