  Traffic congestion in isolated complex networks has been investigated
extensively over the last decade. Coupled network models have recently been
developed to facilitate further understanding of real complex systems. Analysis
of traffic congestion in coupled complex networks, however, is still relatively
unexplored. In this paper, we try to explore the effect of interconnections on
traffic congestion in interconnected BA scale-free networks. We find that
assortative coupling can alleviate traffic congestion more readily than
disassortative and random coupling when the node processing capacity is
allocated based on node usage probability. Furthermore, the optimal coupling
probability can be found for assortative coupling. However, three types of
coupling preferences achieve similar traffic performance if all nodes share the
same processing capacity. We analyze interconnected Internet AS-level graphs of
South Korea and Japan and obtain similar results. Some practical suggestions
are presented to optimize such real-world interconnected networks accordingly.
