On nonsingularity of circulant matrices

Abstract

In Communication theory and Coding, it is expected that certain circulant matrices having $k$ ones and $k+1$ zeros in the first row are nonsingular. We prove that such matrices are always nonsingular when $2k+1$ is either a power of a prime, or a product of two distinct primes. For any other integer $2k+1$ we construct circulant matrices having determinant $0$. The smallest singular matrix appears when $2k+1=45$. The possibility for such matrices to be singular is rather low, smaller than $10^{-4}$ in this case.