Control schemes for synchronizing two subnetworks with weak couplings

In this paper, we propose a well-designed network model with a parameter and study full and partial synchronization of the network model based on the stability analysis. The network model is composed of a star-coupled subnetwork and a globally coupled subnetwork. By analyzing the special coupling configuration, three control schemes are obtained for synchronizing the network model. Further analysis indicates that even if the inner couplings in each subnetwork are very weak, two of the control schemes are still valid. In particular, if the outer coupling weight parameter θ is larger than ( n 2 − 2 n )/4, or the subnetwork size n is larger than θ 2 , the two subnetworks with weak inner couplings can achieve synchronization. In addition, the synchronizability is independent of the network size in case of 0 < θ < n /( n + 1). Finally, we carry out some numerical simulations to confirm the validity of the obtained control schemes. It is worth noting that the main idea of this paper also applies to any network consisting of a dense subnetwork and a sparse network.