A self-organizing shortest path finding strategy on complex networks

The shortcomings of traditional methods to find the shortest pathare revealed, and a strategy of finding the self-organizing shortestpath based on thermal flux diffusion on complex networks ispresented. In our method, the shortest paths between the source nodeand the other nodes are found to be self-organized by comparing nodetemperatures. The computation complexity of the method scaleslinearly with the number of edges on underlying networks. Theeffects of the method on several networks, including a regularnetwork proposed by Ravasz and Barabási which is called the RBnetwork, a real network, a random network proposed by Ravasz andBarabási which is called the ER network and a scale-free network, arealso demonstrated. Analytic and simulation results show that themethod has a higher accuracy and lower computational complexity thanthe conventional methods.