For a class 5 years ago I wrote a paper about "defeating character frequency analysis by using two cipher letters per plaintext letter" (jamesjava.blogspot.com/2009/08/defeating-character-frequency-analysis.html).
Quote:
Using two letters in the cipher text for each letter in the plaintext can be a good way to create a flat character distribution.
The algorithm is to partition the 676 2-letter combinations based on the standard character frequency. i.e. if the standard frequency for a letter is 5% then it will get 5% of the 2-letter combinations (randomly selected). This doubles the size of the data, could include spaces & punctuation, and makes a much larger key.
Note that some letters may get dropped because they occur less than 1/676 (0.15%) of the time. Both 1-gram and 2-gram frequency analysis produce a nearly uniform histogram (variation appears to only be caused by rounding). Two-gram results: P&P=5,117%; SH=5,013%.
Therefore this technique was extremely effective with no obvious weaknesses.
I didn't get much feedback from the professor so I wonder if anyone can comment on this and tell me if my conclusion is correct.