On the accuracy of firefly synchronization with delays

Abstract

Emergent synchronization in populations of fireflies is commonly described by the mathematical model of pulse-coupled oscillators (PCOs). This paper studies the achieved synchronization accuracy in the presence of coupling delays between PCOs. For a three node network, accuracy bounds in the stable state are derived. This case study proves useful when looking at meshed networks, where nodes may not be directly connected with all others. While the network topology impacts the achieved accuracy of PCO synchronization, simulations reveal that even for non-neighboring nodes the timing misalignment rarely exceeds twice the direct coupling delay.