An Ideal Flow Network (IFN) is a strongly connected network where relative flows are preserved (irreducible premagic matrix). IFN can be decomposed into canonical cycles to form a string code called network signature. A network signature can be composed back into an IFN by assignment and merging operations. Using string manipulations on network signatures, we can derive total flow, link values, sum of rows and columns, and probability matrices and test for irreducibility.

翻译：理想流网络（IFN）是一种强连通网络，其中相对流量保持不变（不可约预幻矩阵）。IFN可以分解为规范循环，形成称为网络签名的字符串编码。通过分配与合并操作，网络签名可重新组合为IFN。通过对网络签名进行字符串操作，我们可以推导总流量、链路值、行和与列和、概率矩阵，并检验不可约性。