Recently, the controllability of complex networks has become a hot topic in the field of network science, where the driver nodes play a key and central role. Therefore, studying their structural characteristics is of great significance to understand the underlying mechanism of network controllability. In this paper, we systematically investigate the nodal centrality of driver nodes in controlling complex networks, we find that the driver nodes tend to be low in-degree but high out-degree nodes, and most of driver nodes tend to have low betweenness centrality but relatively high closeness centrality. We also find that the tendencies of driver nodes towards eigenvector centrality and Katz centrality show very similar behaviors, both high eigenvector centrality and high Katz centrality are avoided by driver nodes. Finally, we find that the driver nodes towards PageRank centrality demonstrate a polarized distribution, i.e., the vast majority of driver nodes tend to be low PageRank nodes whereas only few driver nodes tend to be high PageRank nodes.

We numerically investigate that optimal robust onion-like networks can emerge even with the constraint of surface growth in supposing a spatially embedded transportation or communication system. To be onion-like, moderately long links are necessary in the attachment through intermediations inspired from a social organization theory.

Detecting anomalies, such as network failure or intentional attack in Internet, is a vital but challenging task. Although numerous techniques have been developed based on Internet traffic, detecting anomalies from the perspective of Internet topology structure is going to be possible because the anomaly detection of structured datasets based on complex network theory has become a focus of attention recently. In this paper, an anomaly detection method for the large-scale Internet topology is proposed to detect local structure crashes caused by the cascading failure. In order to quantify the dynamic changes of Internet topology, the network path changes coefficient (NPCC) is put forward which highlights the Internet abnormal state after it is attacked continuously. Furthermore, inspired by Fibonacci Sequence, we proposed the decision function that can determine whether the Internet is abnormal or not. That is the current Internet is abnormal if its NPCC is out of the normal domain calculated using the previous k NPCCs of Internet topology. Finally the new Internet anomaly detection method is tested against the topology data of three Internet anomaly events. The results show that the detection accuracy of all events are over 97%, the detection precision for three events are 90.24%, 83.33% and 66.67%, when k=36. According to the experimental values of index F1, larger values of k offer better detection performance. Meanwhile, our method has better performance for the anomaly behaviors caused by network failure than those caused by intentional attack. Compared with traditional anomaly detection methods, our work is more simple and powerful for the government or organization in items of detecting large-scale abnormal events.

Considering that the traditional local-world evolving network model cannot fully reflect the characteristics of real-world power grids, this Letter proposes a new evolving model based on geographical location clusters. The proposed model takes into account the geographical locations and degree values of nodes, and the growth process is in line with the characteristics of the power grid. Compared with the characteristics of real-world power grids, the results show that the proposed model can simulate the degree distribution of China's power grids when the number of nodes is small. When the number of nodes exceeds 800, our model can simulate the USA western power grid's degree distribution. And the average distances and clustering coefficients of the proposed model are close to that of the real world power grids. All these properties confirm the validity and rationality of our model.

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is one of the most serious network attacks that occurred in cyberspace due to sophisticated techniques and deep concealment. Modeling APT attack process can facilitate APT analysis, detection, and prediction. However, current techniques focus on modeling known attacks, which neither reflect APT attack dynamically nor take human factors into considerations. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose a Targeted Complex Attack Network (TCAN) model for APT attack process based on dynamic attack graph and network evolution. Compared with current models, our model addresses human factors by conducting a two-layer network structure. Meanwhile, we present a stochastic model based on states change in the target network to specify nodes involved in the procedure of this APT. Besides, our model adopts time domain to expand the traditional attack graph into dynamic attack network. Our model is featured by flexibility, which is proven through changing the related parameters. In addition, we propose dynamic evolution rules based on complex network theory and characteristics of the actual attack scenarios. Finally, we elaborate a procedure to add nodes by a matrix operation. The simulation results show that our model can model the process of attack effectively.

In this paper, invulnerability and attack strategies are discussed for the undirected unweighted urban road networks and the directed weighted taxi networks of Beijing. Firstly, five new attack strategies, i.e., Initial All Degree (IAD), Initial All Strength (IAS), Recalculated Closeness (RC), Recalculated All Degree (RAD) and Recalculated All Strength (RAS) and five traditional attack strategies, i.e., Initial Degree (ID), Initial Betweenness (IB), Initial Closeness (IC), Recalculated Degree (RD) and Recalculated Betweenness (RB) are adopted to provoke the nodes failure. Secondly, we assess the impacts of these attack strategies using two invulnerability metrics, i.e., S (the relative size of the giant component) and E (the average network efficiency) through simulation experiments by MATLAB. Furthermore, we obtain some conclusions on the basis of the simulation results. Firstly, we discover that IB is more efficient than others for the undirected unweighted 5th ring Beijing road network based on S, and IB is more efficient than others at the beginning while ID is more efficient than IB at last based on E, while IAD causes a greater damage than IAS for the directed weighted 5th ring Beijing taxi network no matter with metrics S or E. Secondly, we find that dynamic attacks are more efficient than their corresponding static attacks, and RB is more destructive than others in all attack graphs while RAD is more destructive than RAS in all attack graphs. Moreover, we propose some suggestions to advance the reliability of the networks according to the simulation results. Additionally, we notice that the damage between ID (RD) and IAD (RAD) is similar due to the large proportion of two-way roads, and we realize that global measures should be employed to estimate the best attack strategy on the basis of that we find the best attack strategy changes with the nodes failure.

The application of complex network theory to power grid analysis has been a hot topic in recent years, which mainly manifests itself in four aspects. The first aspect is to model power system networks. The second aspect is to reveal the topology of the grid itself. The third aspect is to reveal the inherent vulnerability and weakness of the power network itself and put forward the pertinent improvement measures to provide guidance for the construction of power grid. The last aspect is to analyze the mechanism of cascading failure and establish the cascading fault model of large power failure. In the past ten years, by using the complex network theory, many researchers have investigated the structural vulnerability of power grids from the point of view of topology. This letter studies the structural vulnerability of power grids according to the effect of selective node removal. We apply several kinds of node centralities including recently-presented second-order centrality (SOC) to guide the node removal attack. We test the effectiveness of all these centralities in guiding the node removal based on several IEEE power grids. Simulation results show that, compared with other node centralities, the SOC is relatively effective in guiding the node removal and can destroy the power grid with negative degree-degree correlation in less steps.

Identifying IDC (Internet Data Center) IP addresses and analyzing the connection relationship of IDC could reflect the IDC network resource allocation and network layout which is helpful for IDC resource allocation optimization. Recent research mainly focuses on minimizing electricity consumption and optimizing network resource allocation based on IDC traffic behavior analysis. However, the lack of network-wide IP information from network operators has led to problems like management difficulties and unbalanced resource allocation of IDC, which are still unsolved today. In this paper, we propose a method for the IP identification and connection relationship analysis of IDC based on the flow connection behavior analysis. In our method, the frequent IP are extracted and aggregated in backbone communication network based on the traffic characteristics of IDC. After that, the connection graph of frequent IP (CGFIP) are built by analyzing the behavior of the users who visit the IDC servers, and IDC IP blocks are thus identified using CGFIP. Furthermore, the connection behavior characteristics of IDC are analyzed based on the connection graphs of IDC (CGIDC). Our findings show that the method can accurately identify the IDC IP addresses and is also capable of reflecting the relationships among IDCs effectively.

The scan segmentation method is an efficient solution to deal with the test power problem; However, the use of multiple capture cycles may cause capture violations, thereby leading to fault coverage loss. This issue is much more severe in at-speed testing. In this paper, two scan partition schemes based on complex networks clustering ara proposed to minimize the capture violations without increasing test-data volume and extra area overhead. In the partition process, we use a more accurate notion, spoiled nodes, instead of violation edges to analyse the dependency of flip-flops (ffs), and we use the shortest-path betweenness (SPB) method and the Laplacian-based graph partition method to find the best combination of these flip-flops. Beyond that, the proposed methods can use any given power-unaware set of patterns to test circuits, reducing both shift and capture power in at-speed testing. Extensive experiments have been performed on reference circuit ISCAS89 and IWLS2005 to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

The power grid defines one of the most important technological networks of our times and has been widely studied as a kind of complex network. It has been developed for more than one century and becomes an extremely huge and seemingly robust system. But it becomes extremely fragile as well because some unexpected minimal failures may lead to sudden and massive blackouts. Many works have been carried out to investigate the structural vulnerability of power grids from the topological point of view based on the complex network theory. This Letter focuses on the structural vulnerability of the power grid under the effect of selective node removal. We propose a new kind of node centrality called overall information centrality (OIC) to guide the node removal attack. We test the effectiveness of our centrality in guiding the node removal based on several IEEE power grids. Simulation results show that, compared with other node centralities such as degree centrality (DC), betweenness centrality (BC) and closeness centrality (CC), our OIC is more effective to guide the node removal and can destroy the power grid in less steps.

The controllability of complex networks has attracted increasing attention within various scientific fields. Many power grids are complex networks with some common topological characteristics such as small-world and scale-free features. This Letter investigate the controllability of some real power grids in comparison with classical complex network models with the same number of nodes. Several conclusions are drawn after detailed analyses using several real power grids together with Erdös-Rényi (ER) random networks, Wattz-Strogatz (WS) small-world networks, Barabási-Albert (BA) scale-free networks and configuration model (CM) networks. The main conclusion is that most driver nodes of power grids are hub-free nodes with low nodal degree values of 1 or 2. The controllability of power grids is determined by degree distribution and heterogeneity, and power grids are harder to control than WS networks and CM networks while easier than BA networks. Some power grids are relatively difficult to control because they require a far higher ratio of driver nodes than ER networks, while other power grids are easier to control for they require a driver node ratio less than or equal to ER random networks.

The iterative random subdivision of rectangles is used as a generation model of networks in physics, computer science, and urban planning. However, these researches were independent. We consider some relations in them, and derive fundamental properties for the average lifetime depending on birth-time and the balanced distribution of rectangle faces.

The relationship between different brain areas is characterized by functional networks through correlations of time series obtained from neuroimaging experiments. Due to its high spatial resolution, functional MRI data is commonly used for generating functional networks of the entire brain. These networks are comprised of the measurement points/channels as nodes and links are established if there is a correlation in the measured time series of these nodes. However, since the evaluation of correlation becomes more accurate with the length of the underlying time series, we construct in this paper functional networks from MEG data, which has a much higher time resolution than fMRI. We study in particular how the network topologies change in an experiment on ambiguity of words, where the subject first receives a priming word before being presented with an ambiguous or unambiguous target word.

Many deterministic small-world network models have been proposed so far, and they have been proven useful in describing some real-life networks which have fixed interconnections. Search efficiency is an important property to characterize small-world networks. This paper tries to clarify how the search procedure behaves when random walks are performed on small-world networks, including the classic WS small-world network and three deterministic small-world network models: the deterministic small-world network created by edge iterations, the tree-structured deterministic small-world network, and the small-world network derived from the deterministic uniform recursive tree. Detailed experiments are carried out to test the search efficiency of various small-world networks with regard to three different types of random walks. From the results, we conclude that the stochastic model outperforms the deterministic ones in terms of average search steps.

We show a phase transition of the first eigenvalue of random (c,d)-regular graphs, whose instance of them consists of one vertex with degree c and the other vertices with degree d for c > d. We investigate a reduction from the first eigenvalue analysis of a general (c,d)-regular graph to that of a tree, and prove that, for any fixed c and d, and for a graph G chosen from the set of all (c,d)-regular graphs with n vertices uniformly at random, the first eigenvalue of G is approximately with high probability.

In complex network analysis, there are various measures to characterize the centrality of each node within a graph, which determines the relative importance of each node. The more centrality a node has in a network, the more significance it has in the spread of infection. As one of the important extensions to shortest-path based betweenness centrality, the flow betweenness centrality is defined as the degree to which each node contributes to the sum of maximum flows between all pairs of nodes. One of the drawbacks of the flow betweenness centrality is that its time complexity is somewhat high. This Letter proposes an approximate method to calculate the flow betweenness centrality and provides experimental results as evidence.

Network structures can be found in almost any kind of natural or artificial systems as transport medium for communication between the respective nodes. In this paper we study certain key topological features of brain functional networks obtained from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measurements. We compare complex network measures of the extracted topologies with those from Internet service providers (ISPs). Our goal is to identify important features which will be helpful in designing more robust and adaptive future information network architectures.

Network structure has a great impact both on hazard spread and network immunization. The vulnerability of the network node is associated with each other, assortative or disassortative. Firstly, an algorithm for vulnerability relevance clustering is proposed to show that the vulnerability community phenomenon is obviously existent in complex networks. On this basis, next, a new indicator called network “hyper-betweenness” is given for evaluating the vulnerability of network node. Network hyper-betweenness can reflect the importance of network node in hazard spread better. Finally, the dynamic stochastic process of hazard spread is simulated based on Monte-Carlo sampling method and a two-player, non-cooperative, constant-sum game model is designed to obtain an equilibrated network immunization strategy.

This Letter defines thirteen useful correlation measures for directed weighted complex network analysis. First, in-strength and out-strength are defined for each node in the directed weighted network. Then, one node-based strength-strength correlation measure and four arc-based strength-strength correlation measures are defined. In addition, considering that each node is associated with in-degree, out-degree, in-strength and out-strength, four node-based strength-degree correlation measures and four arc-based strength-degree correlation measures are defined. Finally, we use these measures to analyze the world trade network and the food web. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed measures for directed weighted networks.

Fractal structures emerge from statistical and hierarchical processes in urban development or network evolution. In a class of efficient and robust geographical networks, we derive the size distribution of layered areas, and estimate the fractal dimension by using the distribution without huge computations. This method can be applied to self-similar tilings based on a stochastic process.