Adaptive pinning synchronization of a class of nonlinearly coupled complex networks

This paper is concerned with the pinning control of the robust synchronization of a class of nonlinearly coupled complex networks through adaptive techniques. The effect of perturbed couplings is addressed by adaptive compensation and adjustment methods with controllers and coupling strength designs, respectively. For the pinned nodes, a controller gain function is proposed to compensate the nonlinearities based on adaptive estimations of controller parameters on-line; while for the un-pinned nodes, adaptive adjustment laws are addressed to adjust unknown coupling factors to restrain the unexpected action of the nonlinearly coupled networks. On the basis of Lyapunov stability theory, adaptive pinning controllers and coupling strength adjusters are constructed to ensure that the synchronization errors of the networks can be reduced as small as desired in the presence of the nonlinear couplings. A numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

► This paper studies the pinning control of synchronization of nonlinearly coupled complex networks.
► A novel adaptive method deals with more general and relaxed nonlinearities than the existing works.
► The method can ensure the synchronization error to be reduced as small as desired.
► A numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.