Universal robustness of scale-free networks against cascading edge failures

  • Authors:
  • Jian-Wei Wang

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Management Science and Engineering, School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, People's Republic of China

  • Venue:
  • Complexity
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Considering the effect of the local topology structure of an edge on cascading failures, we investigate the cascading reaction behaviors on scale-free networks with respect to small edge-based initial attacks. Adopt the initial load of an edge ij in a network to be Lij = (kikj)α[(∑**math-image**ka)(∑**math-image**kb)]β with ki and kj being the degrees of the nodes connected by the edge ij, where α and β are tunable parameters, governing the strength of the edge initial load, and Γi and Γj are the sets of neighboring nodes of i and j, respectively. Our aim is to explore the relationship between some parameters and universal robustness characteristics against cascading failures on scale-free networks. We find by the theoretical analysis that the Baraba'si-Albert (BA) scale-free networks can reach the strongest robustness level against cascading failures when α + β = 1, where the robustness is quantified by a transition from normal state to collapse. And the network robustness has a positive correlation with the average degree. We furthermore confirm by the numerical simulations these results. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.