Semidirect product groups with Abelian automorphism groups

Abstract Miller's group of order 64 is a smallest example of a nonabelian group with an abelian automorphism group, and is the first in an infinite family of such groups formed by taking the semidirect product of a cyclic group of order 2m (m ≥ 3) with a dihedral group of order 8. This paper gives a method for constructing further examples of non abelian 2-groups which have abelian automorphism groups. Such a 2-group is the semidirect product of a cyclic group and a special 2-group (satisfying certain conditions). The automorphism group of this semidirect product is shown to be isomorphic to the central automorphism group of the corresponding direct product. The conditions satisfied by the special 2-group are determined by establishing when this direct product has an abelian central automorphism group.