Eur. Phys. J. B 71, 631-640 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00190-7

Jamming and correlation patterns in traffic of information on sparse modular networks

¹ Department for Theoretical Physics, Jožef Stefan Institute, P.O. Box 3000, 1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia
² Scientific Computing Laboratory, Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 58, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

Corresponding author: ^a Bosiljka.Tadic@ijs.si

Received: 6 January 2009
Revised: 23 April 2009
Published online: 16 June 2009

Abstract

We study high-density traffic of information packets on sparse modular networks with scale-free subgraphs. With different statistical measures we distinguish between the free flow and congested regime and point out the role of modules in the jamming transition. We further consider correlations between traffic signals collected at each node in the network. The correlation matrix between pairs of signals reflects the network modularity in the eigenvalue spectrum and the structure of eigenvectors. The internal structure of the modules has an important role in the diffusion dynamics, leading to enhanced correlations between the modular hubs, which can not be filtered out by standard methods. Implications for the analysis of real networks with unknown modular structure are discussed.