On a growth model for complex networks capable of producing power-law out-degree distributions with wide range exponents

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 9067
• Main Authors: Esquivel-Gómez, J., Arjona-Villicaña, P. D., Stevens-Navarro, E., Pineda-Rico, U., Balderas-Navarro, R. E., Acosta-Elias, J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 13-03-2015; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/705; 639/766/530/2804; Growth models; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep09067

The out-degree distribution is one of the most reported topological properties to characterize real complex networks. This property describes the probability that a node in the network has a particular number of outgoing links. It has been found that in many real complex networks the out-degree has a behavior similar to a power-law distribution, therefore some network growth models have been proposed to approximate this behavior. This paper introduces a new growth model that allows to produce out-degree distributions that decay as a power-law with an exponent in the range from 1 to ∞.