Modeling of self-healing against cascading overload failures in complex networks

The development of online prognostic and fast-recovery technology promotes the realization of self-healing techniques. Considering the cascading overload failures as one of the major failure modes in real networks, we introduce a model for self-healing against overload propagation in complex networks due to malicious attack. Especially, we study the role of basic quantities (restoration timing and resource) in general self-healing restoration against cascading overload failures in network models of homogeneous (Erds-Rényi) and heterogeneous (scale-free) networks. We demonstrate how networks during cascading failures can be saved from the brink of collapse by proper combination of both restoration timing and resource. And we find that optimal restoration timing for the model and realistic networks exists at a given restoration resource in the self-healing process.