Load-redistribution strategy based on time-varying load against cascading failure of complex network**Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CB328903), the Special Fund of 2011 Internet of Things Development of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China (Grant No. 2011BAJ03B13-2), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61473050), and the Key Science and Technology

Abstract

Cascading failure can cause great damage to complex networks, so it is of great significance to improve the network robustness against cascading failure. Many previous existing works on load-redistribution strategies require global information, which is not suitable for large scale networks, and some strategies based on local information assume that the load of a node is always its initial load before the network is attacked, and the load of the failure node is redistributed to its neighbors according to their initial load or initial residual capacity. This paper proposes a new load-redistribution strategy based on local information considering an ever-changing load. It redistributes the loads of the failure node to its nearest neighbors according to their current residual capacity, which makes full use of the residual capacity of the network. Experiments are conducted on two typical networks and two real networks, and the experimental results show that the new load-redistribution strategy can reduce the size of cascading failure efficiently.