 Informational cost and networks navigabilityErnesto Estrada Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2021, vol. 397, issue C Abstract: Understanding how information navigates through nodes of a complex network has become an increasingly pressing problem across scientific disciplines. Several approaches have been proposed on the basis of shortest paths or diffusive navigation. However, no existing approaches have tackled the challenges of efficient communication in networks without full knowledge of their global topology under external noise. Here, we develop a first principles approach and mathematical formalism to determine the informational cost of navigating a network under different levels of external noise. Using this approach we discover the existence of a trade-off between the ways in which networks route information through shortest paths, their entropies and stability, which define three classes of real-world networks. This approach reveals that environmental pressure has shaped the ways in which information is transferred in bacterial metabolic networks and allowed us to determine the levels of noise at which a protein–protein interaction network seems to work in normal conditions in a cell. Keywords: Network navigability; Network communicability; Matrix functions; Statistical mechanics; Quantum theory; Biological networks (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:397:y:2021:i:c:s0096300320308675 DOI: 10.1016/j.amc.2020.125914 Access Statistics for this article Applied Mathematics and Computation is currently edited by Theodore Simos More articles in Applied Mathematics and Computation from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.