Altering control modes of complex networks by reversing edges

Abstract

Controlling complex networks are one of the ultimate goals in network science. Previous works have found there exist two distinct control modes when controlling the dense networks: distributed and centralized modes. How to change the control mode of a network is a challenging problem. This paper presents an efficient algorithm to alter a network from distributed mode to centralized mode by reversing the direction of a few edges. We first analyze four possible cases when reversing an edge and then design an efficient algorithm to change the control mode of a network. We prove that our algorithm does not affect the control scheme of the network after mode change. We evaluate the performance of our algorithm on both synthetic and real networks. The results show that the control mode of most networks can be easily changed by reversing very few edges. Furthermore, the number of the possible driver nodes of the network after mode change is dramatically decreased, which means these networks are easier to control. Our algorithm provides the ability to design the desired control mode of a network for different control scenarios, which may be used in many applications.