An algorithm for locating propagation source in complex networks

Highlights: • We define the estimated mean and standard deviation of the unknown underlying propagation delay. • We propose three source locating algorithms without knowing any parameters of epidemic models. • We study the locatability of the proposed source locating algorithms. • We propose selecting observer nodes strategy which is corresponding to the proposed algorithms. We study locating propagation source in complex networks. There are already many significant algorithms for locating source, but most of them need the propagation model in advance. In this paper, we propose three new algorithms to accurately locate the source by using only limited observed information without propagation model. The proposed algorithms are based on the defined estimated propagation delay in this paper. We study locatability of algorithms and propose an advisable strategy to select observer nodes based on greedy algorithm. All simulations on both model and empirical networks prove the feasibility and validity of the proposed algorithms.