The maximum order complexity (MOC) of a sequence is a very natural generalization of the well-known linear complexity (LC) by allowing nonlinear feedback functions for the feedback shift register which generates a given sequence. It is expected that MOC is effective to reduce such an instability of LC as an extreme increase caused by the minimum changes of a periodic sequence, i. e. , one-symbol substitution, one-symbol insertion or one-symbol deletion per each period. In this paper we will give the bounds (lower and upper bounds) of MOC for the minimum changes of an m-sequence over GF(q) with period qn-1, which shows that MOC is much more natural than LC as a measure for the randomness of sequences in this case.

From a GF(q) sequence {ai}i0 with period qn - 1 we can obtain new periodic sequences {ai}i0 with period qn by inserting one symbol b GF(q) at the end of each period. Let b0 = Σqn-2 i=0 ai. It Is first shown that the linear complexity of {ai}i0, denoted as LC({ai}) satisfies LC({ai}) = qn if b -b0 and LC({ai}) qn - 1 if b = -b0 Most of known sequences are shown to satisfy the zero sum property, i.e., b0 = 0. For such sequences satisfying b0 = 0 it is shown that qn - LC({ai}) LC({ai}) qn - 1 if b = 0.