Some non-existence and asymptotic existence results for weighing matrices

Abstract: Orthogonal designs and weighing matrices have many applications in areas such as coding theory, cryptography, wireless networking and communication. In this paper, we first show that if positive integer $k$ cannot be written as the sum of three integer squares, then there does not exist any skew-symmetric weighing matrix of order $4n$ and weight $k$, where $n$ is an odd positive integer. Then we show that for any square $k$, there is an integer $N(k)$ such that for each $n\ge N(k)$, there is a symmetric weighing matrix of order $n$ and weight $k$. Moreover, we improve some of the asymptotic existence results for weighing matrices obtained by Eades, Geramita and Seberry.