Degree dependence entropy descriptor for complex networks

In order to supply better accordance for modeling and simulation of complex networks, a new degree dependence entropy (DDE) descriptor is proposed to describe the degree dependence relationship and corresponding characteristic in this paper. First of all, degrees of vertices and the shortest path lengths between all pairs of vertices are computed. Then the degree dependence matrices under different shortest path lengths are constructed. At last the DDEs are extracted from the degree dependence matrices. Simulation results show that the DDE descriptor can reflect the complexity of degree dependence relationship in complex networks; high DDE indicates complex degree dependence relationship; low DDE indicates the opposite one. The DDE can be seen as a quantitative statistical characteristic, which is meaningful for networked modeling and simulation.