Fractals in small-world networks with time-delay

The small-world networks recently introduced by Watts and Strogatz [Nature 393 (1998) 440–442] have attracted much interest in studying the interesting properties of the networks without time-delay. However, a signal or influence travelling on the small-world networks often associated with time-delay features which are very common in biological and physical networks. We develop an analytical approach as well as numerical simulations to try to characterise the effect of time-delay on the properties of small-world networks. An analytical expression of the fractal dimension of the small-world networks is given and thus compared with the results from numerical simulations. Analysis shows that small-world networks with time-delay generally have the multifractals property.