Contribution to the Study of Ternary Functions with a Bent Reed-Muller Spectrum

Some properties of ternary functions with bent Reed-Muller spectra are studied. The main result is, that in three big classes of bent functions, for n > 1, a necessary condition for a ternary function to have a bent Reed-Muller spectrum is that the value vector of the function satisfies f ((3n -1)/2) = 0, in which case the bent Reed-Muller spectrum will have a modular weight congruent to 0 mod 3. A new Extended-Maiorana class of ternary bent functions/spectra is introduced, which improves the production of the standard Maiorana class by a factor (3!/2)n.