On achieving capacity-enhanced small-world networks

Abstract

Networks, whether it is communication or transportation, often suffer from significant degradation in average network flow capacity (ANFC) due to the presence of one or more bottleneck nodes. Presence of a few long-ranged links, connecting distant nodes in a regular network, enhances ANFC and incorporates small-world characteristics. However, the existing deterministic long-ranged link addition strategies based on minimum average path length, maximum betweenness centrality, or maximum closeness centrality, cannot guarantee significant improvement in ANFC. In this paper, we propose an exhaustive search-based long-ranged link (LL) addition algorithm, maximum flow capacity (MaxCap), which deterministically maximizes ANFC, based on the maximum flow (of information or objects) among node-pairs in the context of weighted undirected networks. Furthermore, based on the observations from MaxCap, we propose a new LL addition heuristic, average network flow capacity enhancement using small-world characteristics (ACES), which significantly enhances ANFC and the LL length-type product, and improves traffic load distribution in a weighted undirected network. We validate the performance of our LL addition method through exhaustive simulations on various arbitrary networks and real-world road transportation networks. ACES can be applied to many real-world applications in communication networks, transportation networks, and tactical networks where ANFC is a critical parameter.