Latin hypercubes and MDS codes

Maximum distance separable (MDS) codes have special properties that give them excellent error correcting capabilities. Counting the number of q-ary MDS codes of length n and distance d, denoted by D_q(n,d)_MDS, is a very hard problem. This paper shows that for d=2, it amounts to counting the number of (n-1)-dimensional Latin hypercubes of order q. Thus, D_q(3,2)_MDS is the number of Latin squares of order q, which is known only for a few values of q. This paper proves constructively that D₃(n,2)_MDS=6·2^n-2.