Traffic congestion in isolated complex networks has been investigated extensively over the last decade. Coupled network models have recently been developed to facilitate further understanding of real complex systems. Analysis of traffic congestion in coupled complex networks, however, is still relatively unexplored. In this paper, we try to explore the effect of interconnections on traffic congestion in interconnected Barabási–Albert scale-free networks. We find that assortative coupling can alleviate traffic congestion more readily than disassortative and random coupling when the node processing capacity is allocated based on node usage probability. Furthermore, the optimal coupling probability can be found for assortative coupling. However, three types of coupling preferences achieve similar traffic performance if all nodes share the same processing capacity. We analyze interconnected Internet autonomous-system-level graphs of South Korea and Japan and obtain similar results. Some practical suggestions are presented to optimize such real-world interconnected networks accordingly.

• Received 23 January 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.89.062813