Experiments on node-to-node pinning control of Chua's circuits

In this paper, we study the global intermittent pinning controllability of networks of coupled chaotic oscillators. We explore the feasibility of the recently presented node-to-node pinning control strategy through experiments on Chua's circuits. We focus on the case of two peer-to-peer coupled Chua's circuits and we build a novel test-bed platform comprised of three inductorless Chua's oscillators. We investigate the effect of a variety of design parameters on synchronization performance, including the coupling strength between the oscillators, the control gains, and the switching frequency of node-to-node pinning control. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel pinning control strategy in rapidly taming chaotic oscillator dynamics onto desired reference trajectories while minimizing the overall control effort and the number of pinned network sites. From an analytical standpoint, we present sufficient conditions for global node-to-node pinning controllability and we estimate the maximum switching period for network controllability by adapting and integrating available results on Lyapunov stability theory and partial averaging techniques.