The vast majority of real-world networks are scale-free, loopy, and sparse, with a power-law degree distribution and a constant average degree. In this paper, we study first-order consensus dynamics in binary scale-free networks, where vertices are subject to white noise. We focus on the coherence of networks characterized in terms of the @math -norm, which quantifies how closely agents track the consensus value. We first provide a lower bound of coherence of a network in terms of its average degree, which is independent of the network order. We then study the coherence of some sparse, scale-free real-world networks, which approaches a constant. We also study numerically the coherence of Barab 'asi-Albert networks and high-dimensional random Apollonian networks, which also converges to a constant when the networks grow. Finally, based on the connection of coherence and the Kirchhoff index, we study analytically the coherence of two deterministically-growing sparse networks and obtain the exact expressions, which tend to small constants. Our results indicate that the effect of noise on the consensus dynamics in power-law networks is negligible. We argue that scale-free topology, together with loopy structure, is responsible for the strong robustness with respect to noisy consensus dynamics in power-law networks.
In the sequel, we first provide a lower bound @math for the first-order network coherence @math for all networks with average degree @math . Then we study the first-order network coherence @math for some real scale-free networks and show that @math is constant. We also study the first-order network coherence @math on two random scale-free networks, BA network @cite_28 and HDRAN @cite_38 @cite_55 , which converges to a constant. Finally, we study analytically @math in two deterministic scale-free networks: pseudofractal scale-free web @cite_3 and the 4-clique motif scale-free network, the first-order network coherence for which also tends to a constant. Thus, scale-free topology is advantageous to noisy consensus dynamics.
@cite_28 @cite_38 @cite_55 @cite_3
2008620264 2140488329 2081723824 2080478510
Systems as diverse as genetic networks or the World Wide Web are best described as networks with complex topology. A common property of many large networks is that the vertex connectivities follow a scale-free power-law distribution. This feature was found to be a consequence of two generic mechanisms: (i) networks expand continuously by the addition of new vertices, and (ii) new vertices attach preferentially to sites that are already well connected. A model based on these two ingredients reproduces the observed stationary scale-free distributions, which indicates that the development of large networks is governed by robust self-organizing phenomena that go beyond the particulars of the individual systems. In this article, we propose a simple rule that generates scale-free networks with very large clustering coefficient and very small average distance. These networks are called random Apollonian networks (RANs) as they can be considered as a variation of Apollonian networks. We obtain the analytic results of power-law exponent gamma =3 and clustering coefficient C=(46 3)-36 ln (3 2) approx_equal 0.74, which agree with the simulation results very well. We prove that the increasing tendency of average distance of RANs is a little slower than the logarithm of the number of nodes in RANs. Since most real-life networks are both scale-free and small-world networks, RANs may perform well in mimicking the reality. The RANs possess hierarchical structure as C(k) approx k sup -1 that are in accord with the observations of many real-life networks. In addition, we prove that RANs are maximal planar networks, which are of particular practicability for layout of printed circuits and so on. The percolation and epidemic spreading process are also studied and the comparisons between RANs and Barabasi-Albert (BA) as well as Newman-Watts (NW) networks are shown. We find that, when the network order N (the total number of nodes) is relatively small (as N approx 10 sup 4 ), the performance of RANs under intentional attackmore » is not sensitive to N, while that of BA networks is much affected by N. And the diseases spread slower in RANs than BA networks in the early stage of the suseptible-infected process, indicating that the large clustering coefficient may slow the spreading velocity, especially in the outbreaks.« less We propose a simple algorithm which produces a new category of networks, high-dimensional random Apollonian networks, with small-world and scale-free characteristics. We derive analytical expressions for their degree distributions and clustering coefficients which are determined by the dimension of the network. The values obtained for these parameters are in good agreement with simulation results and comparable to those coming from real networks. We estimate also analytically that the average path length of the networks increases at most logarithmically with the number of vertices. We find that scale-free random networks are excellently modeled by simple deterministic graphs. Our graph has a discrete degree distribution (degree is the number of connections of a vertex), which is characterized by a power law with exponent γ=1 + In 3 ln 2. Properties of this compact structure are surprisingly close to those of growing random scale-free networks with y in the most interesting region, between 2 and 3. We succeed to find exactly and numerically with high precision all main characteristics of the graph. In particular, we obtain the exact shortest-path-length distribution. For a large network ( In N>>1) the distribution tends to a Gaussian of width ∼ N centered at ∼ ln N. We show that the eigenvalue spectrum of the adjacency matrix of the graph has a power-law tail with exponent 2 + y.