Copyright © 2010 Chengdong Dong. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper investigates how to change the disassortativity of the whole network by connecting nodes of different types in two communities. A model connecting two multi-center networks is studied to see if analytical results are achievable. There are three main methods to connect two multi-center subnetworks depending on whether the connecting nodes are centers: (1) connect the centers of one sub-network to noncenter nodes of the other sub-network, (2) connect the centers of the two sub-networks together, and (3) connect non-center nodes of the two sub-networks. The results show that the disassortative property of a single multicenter network can be maintained in scenarios (1) and (2) above, but the disassortativity is changed in (3). In conclusion, either assortativity or disassortativity is achievable by connecting nodes with different degree properties in an ideal network constructed from two communities with similar network topology.