Minimum-cost control of complex networks

• Main Authors: Li, Guoqi, Hu, Wuhua, Xiao, Gaoxi, Deng, Lei, Tang, Pei, Pei, Jing, Shi, Luping
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: complex networks; minimum energy cost; projected gradient method
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82817; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/40298
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Finding the solution for driving a complex network at the minimum energy cost with a given number of controllers, known as the minimum-cost control problem, is critically important but remains largely open. We propose a projected gradient method to tackle this problem, which works efficiently in both synthetic and real-life networks. The study is then extended to the case where each controller can only be connected to a single network node to have the lowest connection complexity. We obtain the interesting insight that such connections basically avoid high-degree nodes of the network, which is in resonance with recent observations on controllability of complex networks. Our results provide the first technical path to enabling minimum-cost control of complex networks, and contribute new insights to locating the key nodes from a minimum-cost control perspective.