Reliability-based topology design for large-scale networks

Network topology has a critical effect on its reliability. Due to the complexity of networks, how to design a more reliable network topology is one of the fascinating and significant challenges. In this paper, inspired by the multi-scale model of biological systems which range from gene to individual cells, and up to the individual organism, we provide a novel method to design a reliable topology of large-scale networks. By means of fractal theory and its application in complex networks, a network topology can be described as consisting of the superposition of basic units, called fractal-cells, which are made up of several components and their connections. Based on this fractal-cell structure, we find that a fractal-cell network has structural similarity with its primitive structure, and then develop a method to build a reliable topology which is generated from a primitive ring structure. Numerical simulation compared with the existing methods and performing on real networks show that our proposed method is effective. (C) 2019 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.