Mean-field Theory for Some Bus Transport Networks with Random Overlapping Clique Structure

Abstract

Transport networks, such as railway networks and airport networks, are a kind of random network with complex topology. Recently, more and more scholars paid attention to various kinds of transport networks and try to explore their inherent characteristics. Here we study the exponential properties of a recently introduced Bus Transport Networks (BTNs) evolution model with random overlapping clique structure, which gives a possible explanation for the observed exponential distribution of the connectivities of some BTNs of three major cities in China. Applying mean-field theory, we analyze the BTNs model and prove that this model has the character of exponential distribution of the connectivities, and develop a method to predict the growth dynamics of the individual vertices, and use this to calculate analytically the connectivity distribution and the exponents. By comparing mean-field based theoretic results with the statistical data of real BTNs, we observe that, as a whole, both of their data show similar character of exponential distribution of the connectivities, and their exponents have same order of magnitude, which show the availability of the analytical result of this paper.