Grouping synchronization in a pulse-coupled network of chaotic spiking oscillators

This paper studies a pulse-coupled network consisting of simple chaotic spiking oscillators (CSOs). If a unit oscillator and its neighbor(s) have (almost) the same parameter values, they exhibit in-phase synchronization of chaos. As the parameter values differ, they exhibit asynchronous phenomena. Based on such behavior, some synchronous groups appear partially in the network. Typical phenomena are verified in the laboratory via a simple test circuit. These phenomena can be evaluated numerically by using an effective mapping procedure. We then apply the proposed network to image segmentation. Using a lattice pulse-coupled network via grouping synchronous phenomena, the input image data can be segmented into some sub-regions.