Maximum nonlinearity of symmetric Boolean functions on odd number of variables

In this correspondence, we establish that for odd n, the maximum nonlinearity achievable by an n-variable symmetric Boolean function is 2/sup n-1/-2/sup (n-1)///sup 2/ and characterize the set of functions which achieve this value of nonlinearity. In particular, we show that for each odd n/spl ges/3, there are exactly four possible symmetric Boolean functions achieving the nonlinearity 2/sup n-1/-2/sup (n-1)/2/.