Link prediction in complex networks based on resource transition capacity and local paths

Link prediction aims to identify missing links within static networks or estimate the probability of emerging links in dynamic networks, representing a critical and challenging research direction in complex network. Many similarity-based methods have been established from various viewpoints, however, there are relatively few methods that take into account both the path information between node pairs and the nodes along the path. To fill this gap, we propose two novel link prediction algorithms, namely LPRA and LPH. The core idea is that the similarity between node pairs is closely related to the local paths connecting the two nodes and the resource transition capability of the nodes along those paths. The algorithms utilize the local paths with adjustable lengths between node pairs and the topological information of the nodes on the path to calculate the similarity index, which incorporate the resource transition capabilities of all the nodes on the possible paths between node pairs. We conducted multiple groups of comparative experiments on 10 real-world networks to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that LPRA and LPH outperform nine classical methods and five recently popular methods. Moreover, LPRA demonstrates a significant difference level (P-value [Formula: see text]) compared to most of the methods in the ANOVA of AUC accuracy, indicating a statistically significant performance advantage of LPRA.