4,372 research outputs found
Opinion and community formation in coevolving networks
In human societies opinion formation is mediated by social interactions,
consequently taking place on a network of relationships and at the same time
influencing the structure of the network and its evolution. To investigate this
coevolution of opinions and social interaction structure we develop a dynamic
agent-based network model, by taking into account short range interactions like
discussions between individuals, long range interactions like a sense for
overall mood modulated by the attitudes of individuals, and external field
corresponding to outside influence. Moreover, individual biases can be
naturally taken into account. In addition the model includes the opinion
dependent link-rewiring scheme to describe network topology coevolution with a
slower time scale than that of the opinion formation. With this model
comprehensive numerical simulations and mean field calculations have been
carried out and they show the importance of the separation between fast and
slow time scales resulting in the network to organize as well-connected small
communities of agents with the same opinion.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. New inset for Fig. 1 and references added.
Submitted to Physical Review
A network epidemic model with preventive rewiring: comparative analysis of the initial phase
This paper is concerned with stochastic SIR and SEIR epidemic models on
random networks in which individuals may rewire away from infected neighbors at
some rate (and reconnect to non-infectious individuals with
probability or else simply drop the edge if ), so-called
preventive rewiring. The models are denoted SIR- and SEIR-, and
we focus attention on the early stages of an outbreak, where we derive
expression for the basic reproduction number and the expected degree of
the infectious nodes using two different approximation approaches. The
first approach approximates the early spread of an epidemic by a branching
process, whereas the second one uses pair approximation. The expressions are
compared with the corresponding empirical means obtained from stochastic
simulations of SIR- and SEIR- epidemics on Poisson and
scale-free networks. Without rewiring of exposed nodes, the two approaches
predict the same epidemic threshold and the same for both types of
epidemics, the latter being very close to the mean degree obtained from
simulated epidemics over Poisson networks. Above the epidemic threshold,
pairwise models overestimate the value of computed from simulations,
which turns out to be very close to the one predicted by the branching process
approximation. When exposed individuals also rewire with (perhaps
unaware of being infected), the two approaches give different epidemic
thresholds, with the branching process approximation being more in agreement
with simulations.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure
Achieving Small World Properties using Bio-Inspired Techniques in Wireless Networks
It is highly desirable and challenging for a wireless ad hoc network to have
self-organization properties in order to achieve network wide characteristics.
Studies have shown that Small World properties, primarily low average path
length and high clustering coefficient, are desired properties for networks in
general. However, due to the spatial nature of the wireless networks, achieving
small world properties remains highly challenging. Studies also show that,
wireless ad hoc networks with small world properties show a degree distribution
that lies between geometric and power law. In this paper, we show that in a
wireless ad hoc network with non-uniform node density with only local
information, we can significantly reduce the average path length and retain the
clustering coefficient. To achieve our goal, our algorithm first identifies
logical regions using Lateral Inhibition technique, then identifies the nodes
that beamform and finally the beam properties using Flocking. We use Lateral
Inhibition and Flocking because they enable us to use local state information
as opposed to other techniques. We support our work with simulation results and
analysis, which show that a reduction of up to 40% can be achieved for a
high-density network. We also show the effect of hopcount used to create
regions on average path length, clustering coefficient and connectivity.Comment: Accepted for publication: Special Issue on Security and Performance
of Networks and Clouds (The Computer Journal
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