Title: "Combinatorial Design Theory in an Industrial Research Lab."

Abstract: Combinatorial design theory is, broadly speaking, the study of the arrangement of objects subject to constraints. It provides a natural framework for expressing and studying practical problems of digital communication. I shall start with an overview of the study of combinatorial designs and demonstrate some of the connections with finite geometry and coding theory. I shall then give two contrasting examples of the application of combinatorial design theory to digital communication, based on my experience as a mathematical consultant at Hewlett-Packard. In the first example the design objective is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of an optical time domain reflectometer while in the second it is to control the envelope power in multicarrier wireless transmission.

No specialist mathematical or engineering knowledge will be assumed!