Nonlinearity of functions over finite fields

Abstract

The nonlinearity and additive nonlinearity of a function are defined as the Hamming distances, respectively, to the set of all affine mappings and to the set of all mappings having nontrivial additive translators. On the basis of the revealed relation between the nonlinearities and the Fourier coefficients of the characters of a function, convenient formulas for nonlinearity evaluation for practically important classes of functions over an arbitrary finite field are found. In the case of a field of even characteristic, similar results were obtained for the additive nonlinearity in terms of the autocorrelation coefficients. The formulas obtained made it possible to present specific classes of functions with maximal possible and high nonlinearity and additive nonlinearity.