Deciding Orthogonality in Construction-A Lattices

Lattices are discrete mathematical objects with widespread applications to integer programs as well as modern cryptography. A fundamental problem in both domains is the Closest Vector Problem (popularly known as CVP). It is well-known that CVP can be easily solved in lattices that have an orthogonal basis if the orthogonal basis is specified. This motivates the orthogonality decision problem: verify whether a given lattice has an orthogonal basis. Surprisingly, the orthogonality decision problem is not known to be either NP-complete or in P. In this paper, we focus on the orthogonality decision problem for a well-known family of lattices, namely Construction-A lattices. These are lattices of the form C + qZ^n, where C is an error-correcting q-ary code, and are studied in communication settings. We provide a complete characterization of lattices obtained from binary and ternary codes using Construction- A that have an orthogonal basis. This characterization leads to an efficient algorithm solving the orthogonality decision problem, which also finds an orthogonal basis if one exists for this family of lattices. We believe that these results could provide a better understanding of the complexity of the orthogonality decision problem in general.