Group testing schemes from low-weight codewords of BCH codes

Despite a large volume of research in group testing, explicit small-size group testing schemes are still difficult to construct, and the parameters of known combinatorial schemes are limited by the constraints of the problem. Relaxing the worst-case identification requirements to probabilistic localization of defectives enables one to expand the range of parameters, and yet the small-size practical constructions are sparse. Motivated by this question, we perform an experimental study of almost disjunct matrices constructed from low-weight codewords of binary BCH codes, and evaluate their performance in nonadaptive group testing. We observe that identification of defectives is much more stable in these schemes compared to the schemes constructed from random binary matrices. We derive an estimate of the error probability of identification in the constructed schemes which provides a partial explanation of their performance.