Two-Layer Network Visualization for Comprehensive Analysis

The aim of Two-layer network visualization is to help users explore in the networks from the view of application requirement. The research abstracts applications and networks that carry them as business layer and carrier layer, which represent separately all kinds of business and service relationships among application entities and the path of information transmission in network world. A two-layer layout is used to reveal the network relationships within each layer and interdependent relations between them. To avoid visual clutters, a flexible stability parameter is applied to force directed algorithm in order to make the corresponding nodes in different layer aligned as far as possible and a matrix transformation optimization is adopted to reduce the crossing of inter-plane line. To help users exploring the important nodes in further analysis, a more objective definition of metrics of importance is proposed to support visual analysis.