Robustness of community networks against cascading failures with heterogeneous redistribution strategies

Abstract

Network robustness is one of the core contents of complex network security research. This paper focuses on the robustness of community networks with respect to cascading failures, considering the nodes influence and community heterogeneity. A novel node influence ranking method, community-based Clustering–LeaderRank (CCL) algorithm, is first proposed to identify influential nodes in community networks. Simulation results show that the CCL method can effectively identify the influence of nodes. Based on node influence, a new cascading failure model with heterogeneous redistribution strategy is proposed to describe and analyze node fault propagation in community networks. Analytical and numerical simulation results on cascading failure show that the community attribute has an important influence on the cascading failure process. The network robustness against cascading failures increases when the load is more distributed to neighbors of the same community instead of different communities. When the initial load distribution and the load redistribution strategy based on the node influence are the same, the network shows better robustness against node failure.