Weight-constrained cut-down de Bruijn sequences

Abstract

In 2011/12, Ruskey, Sawada, Stevens and Williams showed that a binary cut-down de Bruijn sequence can be constructed containing all $n$-tuples of Hamming weight either $r$ or $r+1$ for every possible $r$, and no others. In this paper we examine extensions of this result that require choosing a weight-like function applying to $n$-tuples with symbols taken from an alphabet of arbitrary (finite) size. We consider three possible such weight functions, and in each case establish an analogous result to that of Ruskey et al.