English

Collective behavior of "electronic fireflies"

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

A simple system composed of electronic oscillators capable of emitting and detecting light-pulses is studied. The oscillators are biologically inspired, their behavior is designed for keeping a desired light intensity, W, in the system. From another perspective, the system behaves like modified integrate and fire type neurons that are pulse-coupled with inhibitory type interactions: the firing of one oscillator delays the firing of all the others. Experimental and computational studies reveal that although no driving force favoring synchronization is considered, for a given interval of W phase-locking appears. This weak synchronization is sometimes accompanied by complex dynamical patterns in the flashing sequence of the oscillators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0802.0847,
  title  = {Collective behavior of "electronic fireflies"},
  author = {M. Ercsey-Ravasz and Zs. Sarkozi and Z. Neda and A. Tunyagi and I. Burda},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.0847},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures included

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:10:09.728Z