Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2009
A powerful tool in the construction of orthogonal designs has been amicable orthogonal designs. Recent results in the construction of Hadamard matrices has led to the need to find amicable orthogonal designs A, B in order n and of types (u1, U2, …, u6) and (ν1, ν2, …, νr) respectively satisfying At = -A, Bt = B, and ABt = BAt with
For simplicity, we say A, B are amicable orthogonal designs of type (u1, u2, …, us; v1, v2, …, vr).
We completely answer the question in order 8 by showing (1, 2, 2, 2; 8), (1, 2, 4; 2, 2, 4), (2, 2, 3; 2, 6), (7, 1, 7) and those designs derived from the above are the only possible.
We use our results to obtain new orthogonal designs in order 32.