An Improved Label Propagation Algorithm Based On Node Intimacy For Community Detection In Networks

Community detection in complex network analysis is a quite challenging problem spanning many applications in various disciplines such as biology, physics and social network. A large number of methods have been developed for this problem, among which the label propagation algorithm (LPA) has attracted much attention because of its advantages of nearly-linear running time and easy implementation. Nevertheless, the random updating order and tie-breaking strategy in LPA make the algorithm unstable and may even lead to the formation of a monster community. In this paper, an improved LPA called LPA-INTIM is proposed for solving the community detection problem. Firstly, an intimacy matrix is constructed using local topology information for measuring the intimacy between nodes. And then, the node importance is calculated to ensure that nodes are updated in a specific order. Finally, the label influence is evaluated for updating node label during the label propagation process. In addition, we introduce a novel tightness function to improve the stability of the proposed algorithm. By the comparison with the methods presented in the literatures, experimental results on real-world and synthetic networks show the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.