RSH: A Link-Addition Strategy for Capacity Enhancement in Scale-Free Networks

In this letter, we propose a link-addition strategy, called reduction structural hole (RSH), to enhance the network transport efficiency for scale-free networks. Instead of using global parameters of betweenness centrality and shortest path length that are commonly used in link-addition approaches, we turn to the theory of structural hole to design the new link-addition strategy. RSH applies the theory from social science to guide how to add links to the existing topology and uses network constraint index that requires only local information in link addition. Simulations under both the shortest path and efficient routing schemes verify the effectiveness of the proposed link-addition mechanism. We have found that RSH obtains increased traffic capacity compared with the existing improved efficiency (IE) link-addition strategy. In addition, the RSH strategy does not change the connectivity characteristic of the network.