On the Correlation Distribution for a Niho Decimation.

Let p be a prime, n=2m and d=3p^m-2 with m\geq 2 , and \gcd (d,p^n-1)=1 . In this paper, the correlation distribution between a p -ary m -sequence of period p^n-1 and its d -decimation sequence is investigated in a unified approach. Some results for the binary case are extended to the general case. It is shown that the problem of determining the correlation distribution for d can be reduced to that of solving two combinatorial problems related to the unit circle of the finite field \mathbb {F}_{p^{n}} . For an arbitrary odd prime p , it seems difficult to solve these two problems. However, for p=3 , by studying the weight distribution of the ternary Zetterberg code and counting the numbers of solutions of some equations over \mathbb {F}_{3^{n}} , the two problems are solved, and thus, the corresponding correlation distribution for d$ is completely determined. It is noteworthy that this is the first time that the correlation distribution for a non-binary Niho decimation has been determined since 1976. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]