Exploring the impact of node mobility on cascading failures in spatial networks

Abstract

Existing researches on cascading failures mainly focus on static spatial networks, but rarely consider network scenarios where mobile nodes and static nodes coexist. Therefore, in this work, we explore the impact of node mobility on cascading failures in spatial networks. We first develop a cascading model for static-mobile spatial network systems. In this model, we use the general betweenness to characterize the load of static nodes in the network, and adopt the Gauss–Markov mobility model to generate the movement trajectory of mobile nodes. On this basis, we develop three node interaction modes (i.e., all-connection mode, high-load priority mode and low-load priority mode) to characterize the interaction between static nodes and mobile nodes. Experimental results have shown that 1) unlike the traditional cascading process that is a continuous process, the cascading process of static-mobile spatial networks consists of multiple cascading processes that occur at different times; 2) expanding the network size and reducing the number of mobile nodes can help the network resist cascading failures; 3) there is a tolerance space for network configuration parameters. When the configuration parameters fall into this space, the network can avoid cascading failures; 4) among the three interaction modes, the network robustness in all-connection mode is the worst, followed by low-load priority mode, and finally high-load priority mode. The obtained results can provide theoretical guidance for users to establish a more robust static-mobile spatial network.