Influence of Malfunction and Attack on Target Controllability

Abstract

Target controllability is an interesting property of complex network and attracts many researchers from different fields. However, controlling large natural or technological networks is a great challenge. But it is not feasible and sometimes unnecessary to control the entire network, hence target control seems efficient in this situation. The greedy algorithm was developed and offers a good approximation to calculate the minimum number of driver nodes, where control signals are injected, for control the target nodes in the network. Based on the target control theory, we investigate the target controllability of directed Erdős-Rényi and the Barabási-Albert networks under attack or failure. Results show that degree-based node attack is more efficient than random attacks in directed BA networks on network target controllability but the similar in directed ER networks.