Outer synchronization of delayed coupled systems on networks without strong connectedness: A hierarchical method

We consider the outer synchronization between drive-response systems on networks with time-varying delays, where we focus on the case when the underlying networks are not strongly connected. A hierarchical method is proposed to characterize large-scale networks without strong connectedness. The hierarchical algorithm can be implemented by some programs to overcome the difficulty resulting from the scale of networks. This method allows us to obtain two different kinds of sufficient outer synchronization criteria without the assumption of being strongly connected, by combining the theory of asymptotically autonomous systems with Lyapunov method and Kirchhoff's Matrix Tree Theorem in graph theory. The theory improves some existing results obtained by graph theory. As illustrations, the theoretic results are applied to delayed coupled oscillators and a numerical example is also given.