On asymmetric coverings and covering numbers

An asymmetric covering D(n,R) is a collection of special subsets S of an n-set such that every subset T of the n-set is contained in at least one special S with |S| - |T| ≤ R. In this paper we compute the smallest size of any D(n,1) for n ≤ 8. We also investigate "continuous" and "banded" versions of the problem. The latter involves the classical covering numbers C(n, k, k-1), and we determine the following new values: C(10, 5, 4) = 51, C(11, 7, 6) = 84, C(12, 8, 7) = 126, C(13, 9, 8) = 185 and C(14, 10, 9) = 259. We also find the number of non-isomorphic minimal covering designs in several cases.