Research on controls of complex networks advances in new directions

September 24, 2015 - UNM Department of Mechanical Engineering

Structural permeability of complex networks to control signals

UNM research sheds new light on the controllability of complex biological, social, and technological networks. The paper, featured in Nature Communications, presents a new metric, the "network permeability", which can be used to characterize the controllability of a complex dynamical network, while satisfying several types of constraints that often arise in applications. These constraints include the presence of admissible driver nodes (those that can receive control inputs), target nodes (those that one wants to affect), and "untouchable" nodes (nodes that already function well and whose dynamics one does not want to perturb).

This research is the result of a collaboration between the University Federico II of Naples and UNM.

Lo Iudice, F. et al. Structural permeability of complex networks to control signals. Nat. Commun. 6:8349 doi: 10.1038/ncomms9349 (2015).