Cascade of failures in interdependent networks with different average degree

Most of modern systems are coupled by two sub-networks and therefore should be modeled as interdependent networks. The study towards robustness of interdependent networks becomes interesting and significant. In this paper, mainly by numerical simulations, the robustness of interdependent Erdös–Rényi (ER) networks and interdependent scale-Free (SF) networks coupled by two sub-networks with different average degree are investigated. First, we study the robustness of interdependent networks under random attack. Second, we study the robustness of interdependent networks under targeted attack on high or low degree nodes, and find that interdependent networks with different average degree are significantly different from those interdependent networks with equal average degree.