The Geometry of Frequency Squares

Abstract

This paper establishes a correspondence between mutually orthogonal frequency squares (MOFS) and nets satisfying an extra property (“framed nets”). In particular, we provide a new proof for the bound on the maximal size of a set of MOFS and obtain a geometric characterisation of the case of equality: necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a complete set of MOFS are given in terms of the existence of a certain type of PBIBD based on the L2-association scheme. We also discuss examples obtained from classical affine geometry and recursive construction methods for (complete) sets of MOFS.