Structural Dissection for Controlling Complex Networks

Controlling complex networked systems has been a central goal in different fields and understanding controllability of complex networks has been at the forefront of contemporary science. Despite the recent progress in the development of controllability theories for complex networks, we continue to lack efficient tools to fully understand the effect of network topology and interaction strengths among nodes on controllability. Here we establish a framework to discern the significance of links and nodes for controlling general complex networks in a simple way based on local information. A dissection process is offered by the framework to probe and classify nodes and links completely, giving rise to a criterion for strong structural controllability. Analytical results indicate phase transitions associated with link and node categories, and strong structural controllability. Applying the tools to real networks demonstrate that real technological networks are strong structurally controllable, whereas most of real social and biological networks are not. Moreover, real networks are flexible to be controlled because of many options of driver nodes, and real directed and undirected networks shows essential difference with respect node classification.