A Mathematical Analysis of Network Controllability Through Driver Nodes

A May 2011 Nature article by Liu, Slotine, and Barabasi laid a mathematical foundation for analyzing network controllability of self-organizing networks and how to identify the minimum number of nodes needed to control a network, or driver nodes. In this paper, we continue to explore this topic, beginning with a look at how Laplacian eigenvalues relate to the percentage of nodes required to control a network. Next, we define and analyze super driver nodes, or those driver nodes that survive graph randomization. Finally, we examine node properties to differentiate super driver nodes from other types of nodes in a graph.