A Method for Design of a Growing Complex Network

SUMMARY A complex network design method that finds a desired network structure can be a powerful tool in large-scale system design. Conventional complex network design methods tackle only static networks, that is, they do not consider growth of the target network. In this paper, we propose a new method for the design of a growing complex network. First, we consider evaluation functions which quantitatively represent the characteristics of desired structures by using feature quantities. Then, we formulate the design problem of a growing complex network as a multi-objective optimization problem in order to determine the connection targets of new nodes by using the evaluation functions. By solving the problem, we grow the network, thus obtaining the desired network. We try to generate networks which have the desired clustering coefficient and average path length concurrently. Through numerical experiments, we confirm that the proposed method is effective as a method for the design of growing complex networks. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 97(1): 70–81, 2014; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10382