Ordinal measures provide a valuable collection of tools for analyzing correlated data series. However, using these methods to understand information interchange in the networks of dynamical systems, and uncover the interplay between dynamics and structure during the synchronization process, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we compare the ordinal permutation entropy, a standard complexity measure in the literature, and the permutation entropy of the ordinal transition probability matrix that describes the transitions between the ordinal patterns derived from a time series. We find that the permutation entropy based on the ordinal transition matrix outperforms the rest of the tested measures in discriminating the topological role of networked chaotic Rössler systems. Since the method is based on permutation entropy measures, it can be applied to arbitrary real-world time series exhibiting correlations originating from an existing underlying unknown network structure. In particular, we show the effectiveness of our method using experimental datasets of networks of nonlinear oscillators.
Keywords: chaotic synchronization; complex networks; ordinal patterns; ordinal permutation entropy; ordinal transition network.