On the Derivative Imbalance and Ambiguity of Functions

TL;DR

This paper unifies and extends the study of parameters measuring nonlinearity, ambiguity, and imbalance of functions over finite Abelian groups, revealing their relationships and generalizing previous results.

Contribution

It demonstrates that ambiguity and the parameter $NB_F$ are essentially the same, unifies prior results, and generalizes findings to all Abelian groups with new theoretical insights.

Findings

Ambiguity is equivalent to $NB_F$ up to constants

Unified previous results on nonlinearity and imbalance parameters

Generalized results to any Abelian groups

Abstract

In 2007, Carlet and Ding introduced two parameters, denoted by $Nb_F$ and $NB_F$, quantifying respectively the balancedness of general functions $F$ between finite Abelian groups and the (global) balancedness of their derivatives $D_a F(x)=F(x+a)-F(x)$, $a\in G\setminus\{0\}$ (providing an indicator of the nonlinearity of the functions). These authors studied the properties and cryptographic significance of these two measures. They provided for S-boxes inequalities relating the nonlinearity $\mathcal{NL}(F)$ to $NB_F$, and obtained in particular an upper bound on the nonlinearity which unifies Sidelnikov-Chabaud-Vaudenay's bound and the covering radius bound. At the Workshop WCC 2009 and in its postproceedings in 2011, a further study of these parameters was made; in particular, the first parameter was applied to the functions $F+L$ where $L$ is affine, providing more nonlinearity parameters. In 2010, motivated by the study of Costas arrays, two parameters called ambiguity and deficiency were introduced by Panario \emph{et al.} for permutations over finite Abelian groups to measure the injectivity and surjectivity of the derivatives respectively. These authors also studied some fundamental properties and cryptographic significance of these two measures. Further studies followed without that the second pair of parameters be compared to the first one. In the present paper, we observe that ambiguity is the same parameter as $NB_F$, up to additive and multiplicative constants (i.e. up to rescaling). We make the necessary work of comparison and unification of the results on $NB_F$, respectively on ambiguity, which have been obtained in the five papers devoted to these parameters. We generalize some known results to any Abelian groups and we more importantly derive many new results on these parameters.