Decomposing the Complete r-Graph

Let $f_r(n)$ be the minimum number of complete $r$-partite $r$-graphs needed to partition the edge set of the complete $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices. Graham and Pollak showed that $f_2(n) = n-1$. An easy construction shows that $f_r(n)\le (1-o(1))\binom{n}{\lfloor r/2\rfloor}$ and it has been unknown if this upper bound is asymptotically sharp. In this paper we show that $f_r(n)\le (\frac{14}{15}+o(1))\binom{n}{r/2}$ for each even $r\ge 4$.