On the Stability of the Endemic Equilibrium of A Discrete-Time Networked Epidemic Model

Abstract: Networked epidemic models have been widely adopted to describe propagation phenomena. The endemic equilibrium of these models is of great significance in the field of viral marketing, innovation dissemination, and information diffusion. However, its stability conditions have not been fully explored. In this paper we study the stability of the endemic equilibrium of a networked Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) epidemic model with heterogeneous transition rates in a discrete-time manner. We show that the endemic equilibrium, if it exists, is asymptotically stable for any nontrivial initial condition. Under mild assumptions on initial conditions, we further prove that during the spreading process there exists no overshoot with respect to the endemic equilibrium. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments on real-world networks to demonstrate our results.