On the complexity of enumerating possible dynamics of sparsely connected Boolean network automata with simple update rules

We study how hard is to determine some fundamental properties of dynamics of certain types of network automata. We address the computational complexity of determining how many different possible dynamic evolutions can arise from some structurally very simple, deterministic and sparsely connected network automata. In this as well as our prior, related work, we try to push the limits on the underlying simplicity of two structural aspects of such network automata: (i) the uniform sparseness of their topologies, and (ii) severely restricted local behaviors of the individual agents (that is, the local update rules of the network nodes).