In this paper, we will show that some families of periodic sequences over Z4 and Z8 with period multiple of 2r-1 generated by r-th degree basic primitive polynomials assorted by the root of each polynomial, and give the exact distribution of sequences for each family. We also point out such an instability as an extreme increase of their linear complexities for the periodic sequences by one-symbol substitution, i.e., from the minimum value to the maximum value, for all the substitutions except one.

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.