Graph theory methods for decomposition w.r.t. outputs of Boolean control networks

This paper focuses graph theory method for the problem of decomposition w.r.t. outputs for Boolean control networks (BCNs). First, by resorting to the semi-tensor product of matrices and the matrix expression of BCNs, the definition of decomposition w.r.t. outputs is introduced. Second, by referring to the graphical structure of BCNs, a necessary and sufficient condition for the decomposition w.r.t. outputs is obtained based on graph theory method. Third, an effective algorithm to realize the maximum decomposition w.r.t. outputs is proposed. Finally, some examples are addressed to validate the theoretical results.