Sudoku-like arrays, codes and orthogonality

This paper is concerned with constructions and orthogonality of generalized Sudoku arrays of various forms. We characterize these arrays based on their constraints; for example Sudoku squares are characterized by having strip and sub-square constraints. First, we generalize Sudoku squares to be multi-dimensional arrays with strip and sub-cube constraints and construct mutually orthogonal sets of these arrays using linear polynomials. We add additional constraints motivated by elementary intervals for low discrepancy sequences and again give a construction of these arrays using linear polynomials in detail for 3 dimensional and a general construction method for arbitrary dimension. Then we give a different construction of these hypercubes due to MDS codes. We also analyze the orthogonality of all of the Sudoku-like hypercubes we consider in this paper.