Traffic on complex networks: Towards understanding global statistical properties from microscopic density fluctuations

Bosiljka Tadić, Stefan Thurner, G. J. Rodgers
2004 Physical Review E  
We study the microscopic time fluctuations of traffic-load and the global statistical properties of a dense traffic of particles on scale-free cyclic graphs. For a wide range of driving rates R the traffic is stationary and the load timeseries exhibit anti-persistence due to the regulatory role of the super-structure associated with two hub nodes in the network. We discuss how the super-structure effects the functioning of the network at high traffic density and at the jamming threshold. The
more » ... ree of correlations systematically decreases with increasing traffic density and eventually disappears when approaching a jamming density R_c. Already before jamming we observe qualitative changes in the global network-load distributions and the particle queuing-times. These changes are related to the occurrence of temporary crises in which the network-load increases dramatically, and then slowly falls back to a value characterizing free-flow.
doi:10.1103/physreve.69.036102 pmid:15089356 fatcat:g5vy6vqphzfm7g4ilrzwpvb3jy