Int. J. Electron. Commun.

(AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Electronics and

Communications (AEÜ)
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aeue

Regular paper

Synchronization and chaos in coupled memristor-based

FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits with memristor synapse
Jihong Zhang, Xiaofeng Liao ⇑
Chongqing Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Circuits and Intelligent Information Processing, College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Southwest University,
Chongqing 400715, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The memristor has drawn a significant interest in the fields of neuromorphic circuits because the nanos-
Received 27 November 2016 cale memristor is a strong candidate to become the critical element of novel ultra-high density low-
Accepted 4 March 2017 power non-volatile memories. In the present paper, we focus on networks of FitzHugh-Nagumo neuron
circuits employing memristor. First, we build the memristor-based circuit of FitzHugh-Nagumo model.
The details of the chaotic phenomena of the memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit under external
Keywords: stimuli have been found with use of computer simulations, i.e., we have numerically calculated wave-
Memristor
form diagrams, phase portraits, Lyapunov exponents and bifurcation diagram. And we also confirm these
FitzHugh-Nagumo neuron circuit
Chaos
results of theoretical analyses and numerical calculations by circuit simulation experiments of the actual
Chaotic synchronization analog circuit realization using Multisim modeling. Then the synchronization of coupled memristor-
Memristor synapse based chaotic neurons with memristor synapse is discussed, and synchronization mechanism is also
found. Finally, we have also derived the sufficient conditions of chaotic synchronization in unidirectional
coupled neuron circuits and bidirectional coupled neuron circuits respectively, which are that the param-
eter of memristor synapse must meet certain conditions. These results of theoretical analyses have been
confirmed by numerical simulation.
Ó 2017 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The memristor was theoretically introduced by Chua as a two-
terminal electrical element which corresponds to the missing con-
stitutive nonlinear relationship linking charge and flux in 1971 [1].
The memristor exhibits some peculiar behavior different from that
exhibited by the resistor, the inductor, or the capacitor, and has
been introduced as the fourth basic circuit element. A broad gener-
alization of memristors to an interesting class of nonlinear dynam-
ical systems was called memristive system which was introduced
by Chua and Kang [2]. Encouraged by the physical implementation
of memristive devices at nano scale at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs
in 2008 [3], the memristor has drawn a significant interest in
exploring its inherent characteristics and potential applications
[4], especially in the fields of analysis of memristor-based chaotic
circuits [5–9], synchronization of coupled memristor-based cir-
cuits [10–15] and neuromorphic circuits [12–19]. Many research-
ers obtained several types of nonlinear memristor-based chaotic
circuits by replacing Chua diode with a memristor in some of the
well studied Chua’s circuits [5,8,9]. The memristor-based circuits
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ylpandazjh@163.com (J. Zhang), xfliao_cqu@163.com (X. Liao).
have been exhibited chaotic behaviors in these works. Chaotic syn-
chronization of coupled memristor-based Chua’s circuits [10] and
Chua’s circuits coupled through memristors [11] has been demon-
strated. Recently, more and more attention has been drawn to
memristor-based coupling neural networks [12–15]. The some
mechanisms underlying the emergence of synchronization
between memristor-coupled Hindmarsh–Rose (H–R) oscillatory
neural cells have been provided [12]. Synchronization and
oscillation death of exponential flux-controlled memristor cou-
pling in H–R neuron have been presented [15]. Synchronization
of memristor-based coupling neural networks with time-varying
delays has also been verified [13,14].
In 1961, FitzHugh proposed a two first-order differential math-
ematical model that approximates the electrical characteristics of
excitable cells [20], and by employing a tunnel diode the equiva-
lent circuit for this model was created by Nagumo et al. [21]. The
different analog circuits for FitzHugh-Nagumo model have been
built because the analog oscillator is physically implemented and
its dynamical behavior can also be studied [22–25]. The hardware
implementation of the FitzHugh-Nagumo’s equations had
employed operational transconductance amplifiers [22], or nonlin-
ear resistor [23–25]. The pinched hysteresis loop current voltage
characteristic of the memristor means that a lag occurs between

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2017.03.003
1434-8411/Ó 2017 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90
the application and removal of a field and its subsequent effect,
which is similar to the neurons in the human brain [14]. Due to this
characteristic, memristor is a potential candidate for FitzHugh-
Nagumo neuron circuits substituting amplifiers, or nonlinear resis-
tor. It is interesting to employ memristor in circuit implementation
of the FitzHugh-Nagumo model because nanoscale size of memris-
tor keeps the elementary neural oscillator small, which will limit
the final size and power consumption of the neuron network.
More interestingly, the memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit
can exhibit many nonlinear dynamical behaviors, especially chao-
tic attractor, because of the variable resistive property with mem-
ory and the switching characteristic of the memristor.
Study on chaotic circuits has been attracting the attention of
researchers for at least three decades [26,27]. Chaos synchroniza-
tion has been intensively studied in chaotic circuits over the past
three decades [28–30]. The stability of the synchronization error
system was investigated to obtain chaotic synchronization condi-
tions in [29,30]. Chaos synchronization in physical and biological
system, especially in coupled neuromorphic circuits, is a fascinat-
ing subject that has attracted a lot of renewed attention [17,31–
34]. Synchronization of chaotic neurons under external stimuli
plays a major role in the transmission of neural signals between
tonic spiking and bursting [34]. Neuronal cells are linked to each
other by specialized intercellular pathways known as synapses
which play important roles in the process of information transmis-
sion among the coupled neurons. Cellular neural networks with
nanoscale memristor synapses may achieve the large connectivity
and compact system size [16,17,19]. More interestingly, the synap-
tic weight of each memristor synapse can be stored due to analog
signal storing capability of the memristor [16,17]. In this paper,
first, we build memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo neuron circuit.
Then, the memristor synapses are chosen to couple memristor-
based FitzHugh-Nagumo neuron circuits. It has some potential
applications for example in creating artificial brain, pattern recog-
nition, signal processing and optimization. At the same time,
because one possibility for obtaining high-frequency chaotic cir-
cuits is to use nanoscale memristor [9], the coupled memristor-
based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits with memristor synapse have
immense potential for application in cryptography, secure commu-
nications, and so on.
All techniques for coupling two or more nonlinear chaotic sys-
tems can be mainly divided into two classes [17]: ‘unidirectional
coupling’ and ‘bidirectional coupling’. Electrical synapses are usu-
ally bidirectional, but in some cases, can greatly operate in one
direction more than the other, or only in one direction [17]. Fur-
thermore, the unidirectional coupled circuits can also be applied
to secure spread spectrum communication [29]. In our work, both
unidirectional coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo chaotic circuits and bidi-
rectional ones are just investigated. The ultimate goal of this paper
is to obtain the sufficient conditions for chaotic synchronization in
these coupled circuits with memristor synapses.
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 introduces
the memristor-based circuit realization of FitzHugh-Nagumo
model. In Section 2, we give some details of the chaotic phenomena
of the memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit under external
stimuli with use of computer simulations, i.e., we numerically cal-
culate waveform diagrams, phase portraits, Lyapunov exponents
and bifurcation diagram. And we also confirm these results of the-
oretical analyses and numerical calculations by circuit simulation
experiments of the actual analog circuit realization using Multisim
modeling. Synchronization in unidirectional coupled two
memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo chaotic circuits and the
influence of the parameters of memristor synapse are thoroughly
studied in Section 3. In Section 4, we focus on sufficient conditions
for synchronization in a typical neuron network consists of
NðN P 2Þ bidirectional coupled identical memristor-based
83
FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits and influences of the parameters of
memristor synapse are also studied. Finally, Section 5 draws con-
clusion and future direction of the research.
2. Memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit and chaos
Fig. 1(a) shows the circuit realization of the memristor-based
FitzHugh-Nagumo neuron model, which is directly generalized
from FitzHugh-Nagumo cable model [32,35] by employing a three
segment piecewise-linear flux-controlled memristor [5] for realiza-
tion of a nonlinear function of the membrane voltage and the time.
By using the protypical analog circuit model of the memristor pro-
posed in [36], the actual analog circuit realization using Multisim
modeling for this proposed neuron model is shown in Fig. 1(b).
The differential equations describing the circuit in Fig. 1(a) can
be written by
8
>
> C dv ¼ iL  WðuÞv þ iS ;
< dt
L didtL ¼ RiL  v ; ð1Þ
>
>
: du ¼ v ;
dt
where iS represents the external driving current source which has
the following form iS ¼ XF cosðXtÞ. And F is the amplitude, X is the
angular frequency of the external periodic signal. Assume the mem-
ristor is flux-controlled and has the volt-ampere characteristic [5,6]:
i ¼ WðuÞv ¼ fb þ 0:5ða  bÞ½sgnðu þ 1Þ  sgnðu  1Þgv ; ð2Þ
where u denotes memristor flux, and the nonlinear relationship of
memristor charge q –flux u is:
qðuÞ ¼ bu þ 0:5ða  bÞðju þ 1j  ju  1jÞ: ð3Þ
By substituting v ¼ x, iL ¼ u ¼ z, t ¼ RC s, and X ¼ RC into (1),
y
R
, x
then redefining s as t, and grouping constants, the normalized
equations are obtained:
8
< x_ ¼ y  fb þ 0:5ða  bÞ½sgnðz þ 1Þ  sgnðz  1Þg  x þ ðF 1 =xÞ cosðxtÞ;
>
y_ ¼ ry  rx;
>
:_
z ¼ cx;
ð4Þ
where a ¼ aR, b ¼ bR, r ¼ R LC, c ¼ RC, F 1 ¼ R2 CF. The chaotic
2
dynamics of (4) depend on the parameters a, b, r, c, F 1 and x. When
we choosea ¼ 1:03, b ¼ 0:5, r ¼ 0:98, c ¼ 1, F 1 ¼ 0:15 and
x ¼ 0:75, the system (4) has a chaotic attractor shown in Fig. 2(a)
where initial condition is set to [0, 0, 0.001]. Fig. 2(b) displays the
time-series of signal x. When letting ðF 1 =xÞ cosðxtÞ ¼
ðF 1 =xÞ cosðxuÞ and du
dt
¼ 1 in system (4), the Lyapunov exponents
can be estimated and be shown in Fig. 2(c), which exhibits the fol-
lowing set of the associated Lyapunov exponents (t ¼ 500):
LE1 ¼ 0:0904, LE2 ¼ 0, LE3 ¼ 0:0035, LE4 ¼ 0:2375.We use the
parameter a of the memristor as the control parameter and carry
out a numerical simulation of Eq. (4) for studying the dynamic
behavior of the system. The bifurcation diagram of x in (4) is shown
in Fig. 2(d). When the memristor parameter a is changed, periodic
or chaotic oscillations of the membrance voltage x are observed.
From Fig. 2(d), it can be observed that the stable chaotic behaviors
mainly occur in the regions 1:06 < a < 0:99 and
1:28 < a < 1:26. The proposed FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit is
implemented using Multisim modeling and is shown in Fig. 1 (b).
Here, the operational amplifier U 1 converts the voltage across the
memristor into the corresponding flux. U 2 and U 3 construct a win-
dow comparator which compares the flux through the memristor
between two reference levels, which causes ADG201AKN state to
switch between on and off. The parameter values of the circuit
are fixed as C ¼ 10nF, L ¼ 18mH, R ¼ 1330X. For the memristor,
the parameters is chosen asR1 ¼ 1kX, C 1 ¼ 750pF, R2 ¼ 100kX for
84 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90

Fig. 1. (a) The memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit; (b) A Multisim model of the memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuit.

Fig. 2. (a) Chaotic attractor in the (x  y) plane of (4); (b) The time-series of signal x; (c) The corresponding Lyapunov exponent; (d) One parameter bifurcation diagram in
(a  x) plane.

the integrator part, v 1 ¼ v 2 ¼ 1V for the reference voltages of the Integrating both sides of Eq. (1) with respect to time t [5,7], we
window comparator, R4 ¼ 10kX for the output of the window get a set of equations which define among two fundamental circuit
comparator, R4 ¼ 2513X and R5 ¼ 1292X for the memductance of variables, namely, the charge and the flux:
the memristor, R6 ¼ R7 ¼ 2kX and R5 ¼ 1292X for the negative con- (
C ddtu ¼ qL  qðuÞ þ ðF=X2 Þ sinðXtÞ;
ductance part. The frequency of the external current source is ð5Þ
8.9749 kHz, and the amplitude is fixed as 1.45 mA. The results of L dq
dt
L
¼ RqL  u;
Multisim simulation are given in Fig. 3. Here, v C denotes the voltage
where
across the capacitor C, and iL denotes the current across the 8
inductor L. From Fig. 3, we can observe that the phase portrait in <q ¼ D Rt
i ðtÞdt;
the (v C  iL ) plane and the time series of v C are consistent with 1 L
L
ð6Þ
: u¼ D Rt
the corresponding results in the numerical simulation. v ðtÞdt:
1
 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90 85

Fig. 3. Multisim simulation: (a) chaotic attractor in the (v C  iL ) plane in double trace oscilloscope (horizontal scale: 5 [V/Div.], vertical scale: 2 [V/Div.]); (b) A section of the
time series of v C in oscilloscope (horizontal scale: 2 [ms/Div.], vertical scale: 2 [V/Div]).

Here qL denotes the charge of the inductor L, and u denotes the
flux of the capacitor C or memristor. By substituting u ¼ x, qL ¼ Ry,
t ¼ RC s, and X ¼ RC
x into (5), then redefining s as t, and grouping
constants, the normalized equations are obtained:
( 3. Synchronization in unidirectional coupled two memristor-
x_ ¼ y  ½bx þ 0:5ða  bÞðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ;
y_ ¼ ry  rx;
ð7Þ
where F 2 ¼ R3 C 2 F. When we choose the same parameters in Fig. 2
and F 2 ¼ 0:15, the system (7) has a chaotic attractor shown in
Fig. 4(a) where initial condition is set to [0.001, 0]. Fig. 4(b) displays
the time-series of signalx. When letting ðF 2 =xÞ sinðxtÞ ¼
ðF 2 =xÞ sinðxuÞ and dudt
¼ 1 in system (7), the Lyapunov exponents
can be estimated and be shown Fig. 4(c), which exhibits the follow-
ing set of the associated Lyapunov exponents (t ¼ 500):
LE1 ¼ 0:0982, LE2 ¼ 0, LE3 ¼ 0:2275. Fig. 4(d) displays the bifur-
cation diagram of x in (7). When the memristor parameter a is
changed, periodic or chaotic oscillations of the membrane
voltage x are observed. As it is shown, the ranges of the stable chao-
tic behaviors mainly occur in 1:06 < a < 0:99 and
1:28 < a < 1:26. From Fig. 2(d) and Fig. 4(d), it can be observed
that the dynamical behaviors of system (4) have essentially in
agreement with one of system (7) for the same circuit parameters.
based FitzHugh-Nagumo chaotic circuits
In this section, we have used the idea of unidirectional coupling
technique [17,29] to observe chaos synchronization in the two
identical memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits of Fig. 1.
Fig. 5 shows the two identical FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits are cou-
pled by means of a flux-controlled memristor synapse. The buffer
acts as a signal driving element which isolates the first circuit vari-
ables being affected by the second circuit variables. In this way,
coupling only the second neuron circuit is influenced by the first
one.
As for the coupling memristor, its nonlinear current -voltage
relationship is
iM ¼ fbm þ 0:5ðam  bm Þ½sgnðu1  u2 þ 1Þ  sgnðu1  u2  1Þgðv 1  v 2 Þ:
ð8Þ

Fig. 4. (a) Chaotic attractor in the (x  y) plane of (7); (b) The time-series of signal x; (c) The corresponding maximal Lyapunov exponent spectrum; (d) One parameter
bifurcation diagram in (a  x) plane.
86 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90

and

si r þ am r þ r > 0: ð14bÞ
From (14a) and (14b), the following equations can be obtained:
am > si  r; ð15aÞ
and

am > si  1: ð15bÞ

When the parameters were chosen to be a ¼ 1:03, b ¼ 0:5

and r ¼ 0:98 (given in Section 2), the FitzHugh-Nagumo neuron
is chaotic, (15a) was calculated to be am > 0:05 for si ¼ a, or
Fig. 5. Schematic circuit realization of the coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits via a
memristor synapse. am > 0:48 for si ¼ b. Meanwhile, (15b) was calculated to be
am > 0:03 for si ¼ a, or am > 0:5 for si ¼ b. Hence, the value of
Let us assume that state vectors for the first neuron system and am in (14a) and (14b) was calculated to be 0.05, and thus for all
the second one are X1 ¼ ½x1 y1 T and X2 ¼ ½x2 y2 T respectively. am > 0:05 the two FitzHugh-Nagumo neurons in system (9) will
Using (7) to describe the dynamics of each neuron and taking care synchronize asymptotically. In order to investigate this synchro-
of the coupling, a simple mathematical analysis permits the nor- nization phenomenon, the system (9) has be calculated by
malized state equations in Fig. 4, which are represented as Runge-Kutta method for different values of am and bm . Fig. 6(a)
8 shows the chaotic attractor of the second neuron in (9) for the ini-
> x_ 1 ¼ y1  g 1 ðx1 Þ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ; tial conditions x2 ð0Þ ¼ 0:002 and y2 ð0Þ ¼ 0:005 when am ¼ 0
>
>
>
> y_ 1 ¼ ry1  rx1 ; and bm ¼ 0. As shown in Fig. 6(b), for am ¼ 0:01 < 0:05 and
>
>
>
< x_ ¼ y  g ðx Þ þ ðF =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ þ g ðx  x Þ;
2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2 bm ¼ 0:1, the synchronization of the two coupled neurons in (9)
> y_ 2 ¼ ry2  rx2 ;
> cannot occur for the initial condition [x1 ð0Þ; y1 ð0Þ; x2 ð0Þ; y2 ð0Þ)]=
>
>
>
> [0.001,0,0.002,0.005]. However, for am ¼ 0:1 > 0:05 and
> g 1 ðxÞ ¼ ½bx þ 0:5ða  bÞðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ;
>
: bm ¼ 0, the two coupled neurons exhibit perfect synchronization
g 2 ðx1  x2 Þ ¼ ½bm ðx1  x2 Þ þ 0:5ðam  bm Þðjx1  x2 þ 1j  jx1  x2  1jÞ;
shown in Fig. 6(c). The bifurcation diagram of the signal difference
ð9Þ (x1  x2 ) with respect to the bifurcation parameter am when
where am ¼ am R, bm ¼ bm R. The synchronization manifold X1 ¼ X2 is bm ¼ 0 is shown in Fig. 6(d), which is used for studying analytically
invariant in the phase space (X1 ; X2 ) of the coupled system (9)[31]. the dynamic behavior of system (9). As it is shown, for low values of
We noted that if the parameters are chosen to be a ¼ 1:03, am , the two coupled neurons remain in a desynchronization state,
b ¼ 0:5, r ¼ 0:98, F 2 ¼ 0:15 and x ¼ 0:75, which are given in Sec- the range of which is gradually narrowed and the two coupled neu-
tion 2, this manifold is known to contain the chaotic attractor. Com- rons ultimately result in a complete chaotic synchronization mode
plete global chaotic synchronization occurs when the coupled when am > 0:05. From the bifurcation diagram of (x1  x2 ) versus
neuron circuits asymptotically exhibit identical chaotic behaviors, the coupled memristor’s parameter bm when am ¼ 0:02 < 0:05
i.e., kx1 ðtÞ  x2 ðtÞk ! 0 and ky1 ðtÞ  y2 ðtÞk ! 0, ast ! 1 for any dif- (Fig. 6(e)), one can see that the synchronization of the two coupled
ferent sets of initial conditions (x1 ð0Þ–x2 ð0Þ; y1 ð0Þ–y2 ð0Þ) [28,31,32]. neurons can’t occur for 0 6 bm 6 1. In our numerical simulation,
Hence, the synchronization yet can’t occur for greater values of bm when
am < 0:05. Specifically, we set the initial condition for x2 ð0Þ as
g 2 ðx1 ðtÞ  x2 ðtÞÞ ¼ am ðx1 ðtÞ  x2 ðtÞÞ; ð10Þ x2 ð0Þ ¼ x1 ð0Þ þ /ð0Þ, where /ð0Þ will be considered in the interval
as t ! 1. Assuming x1 andx2 are almost identical at synchroniza- [1.0, 1.0], with step D/ð0Þ ¼ 0:01. From the bifurcation diagram
tion, then either (jx1 j 6 1 and jx2 j 6 1), or (x1 > 1 and x2 > 1), or of (x1  x2 ) versus /ð0Þ for am ¼ 0:1 > 0:05 and bm ¼ 0:01 shown
(x1 < 1 and x2 < 1). It follows that g 1 ðx1 Þ  g 1 ðx2 Þ ¼ si ðx1  x2 Þ in Fig. 6(f), the synchronization phenomenon can also be observed
and si takes two values ‘ a’ and ‘b’ depending upon the region of oper- if we change the initial conditions. As for an arbitrary initial error
ation, i.e. si ¼ a for (jx1 j 6 1 and jx2 j 6 1), while si ¼ b for (x1 > 1 and between two neurons, when the coupled memristor parameter am
x2 > 1) or (x1 < 1 and x2 < 1). Then, letting e1 ¼ x1  x2 , is >0.05, the initial error will converge to zero asymptotically and
e2 ¼ y1  y2 , the error dynamical system of (9) can be expressed by: the two coupled chaotic neurons will follow the same trajectory
 after a finite period of time. It presents a sufficient condition for
e_ 1 ¼ e2  si e1  am e1 ;
ð11Þ chaos synchronization of unidirectional coupled FitzHugh-
e_ 2 ¼ re2  re1 ; Nagumo neurons, provided that the coupling memristor parameter
or am which is satisfied certain condition.
      
e_ 1 si  am 1 e1 e1
¼ ¼A ; ð12Þ 4. Synchronization in the coupled memristor-based FitzHugh-
e_ 2 r r e2 e2 Nagumo chaotic circuits
where si ¼ a; b; i ¼ 1; 2. According to Lyapunov criteria, if the real
parts of all eigenvalues of the matrix A are negative, then The electrical synapses are usually bidirectional. In this section,
e1 ¼ e2 ¼ 0 is a stable point and the two coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo we study chaos synchronization in a typical neuron network con-
neurons will synchronize asymptotically. The characteristic equation sists of NðN P 2Þ bidirectional coupled identical memristor-based
of A is FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits. In the case of N ¼ 2, the buffer is not
needed in Fig. 5 and the memristor is only electrical synapse.
k2 þ ðsi þ am þ rÞk þ si r þ am r þ r ¼ 0: ð13Þ Fig. 7 shows a ring of bidirectional coupled memristor-based
The eigenvalues of the characteristic Eq. (13) have negative real FitzHugh-Nagumo chaotic circuit (N ¼ 3) with the same coupling
parts if memristor synapse.
In this neural network, identical neurons can be expressed
si þ am þ r > 0; ð14aÞ as
 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90 87

2 2

1 1

0 0

y2

x2
-1 -1

-2 -2
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
x2 x1

(a) (b)

0
x2

-1

-2
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
x1

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

Fig. 6. (a) One band of chaotic attractor of Eq. (9) for x2 ð0Þ ¼ 0:002 and y2 ð0Þ ¼ 0:005; (b) Unsynchronized motion in (x1  x2 ) plane for am ¼ 0:01 < 0:05 and bm ¼ 0:1; (c)
Synchronized motion in (x1  x2 ) plane for am ¼ 0:1 > 0:05 and bm ¼ 0; (d) Bifurcation diagram of (x1  x2 ) vs. am , in the case of coupled neurons, for bm ¼ 0; (e) Bifurcation
diagram of (x1  x2 ) vs. bm , in the case of coupled neurons, for am ¼ 0:02; (f) Bifurcation diagram of (x1  x2 ) vs. /ð0Þ for am ¼ 0:1 and bm ¼ 0:01. In all cases the following
parameters have been used: a ¼ 1:03, b ¼ 0:5, r ¼ 0:98, F 2 ¼ 0:15, x ¼ 0:75. Initial conditions are set to [0.001,0,0.002,0.005] for (a)-(e) and [0.001,0,0.001+/
(0),0.005] for (f).
8
>
> XN and
>
> x_ j ¼ yj  g 1 ðxj Þ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ þ g 2 ðxi  xj Þ;  
>
>
>
< i¼1;i–j am 0
C¼ :
y_ j ¼ ryj  rxj ; ð16Þ 0 0
>
>
>
>
>
> g 1 ðxÞ ¼ ½bx þ 0:5ða  bÞðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ; Define the synchronization manifold [31] as ui ðtÞ ¼ uj ðtÞ ¼ sðtÞ.
>
:
g 2 ðxÞ ¼ ½bm ðxÞ þ 0:5ðam  bm Þðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ: Let us define the error signals as: ej ¼ ujþ1  uj , j ¼ 1; 2;    ; N,with
uNþ1 ¼ u1 . Then, the error dynamics can be expressed by:
where j ¼ 1; 2;    ; N, N P 2. Complete synchronization occurs
when the coupled chaotic neurons asymptotically exhibit identical e_ j ¼ u_ jþ1  u_ j
behaviors, i.e., kxi  xj k ! 0 as t ! 1, for any different sets of initial X
N X
N

conditions (x1 ð0Þ–x2 ð0Þ; y1 ð0Þ–y2 ð0Þ). Hence, ¼ f ðujþ1 ; tÞ  f ðuj ; tÞ þ C ðui  ujþ1 Þ  C ðui  uj Þ
i¼1;i–jþ1 i¼1;i–j
g 2 ðxi  xj Þ ¼ am ðxi  xj Þ: ð17Þ " #
yjþ1  yj  g 1 ðxjþ1 Þ þ g 1 ðxj Þ X
N
¼ þC ðui  ujþ1  ui þ uj Þ
From (17), the system (16) is rewritten as follows rðyjþ1  yj Þ  rðxjþ1  xj Þ i¼1
X
N  " #  " #
u_ j ¼ f ðuj ; tÞ þ C ðui  uj Þ; j ¼ 1; 2;    ; N; ð18Þ si 1 xj Nam 0 xj
¼ þ
i¼1;i–j r r yj 0 0 yj
 " #
where si  Nam 1 xj
" # " # ¼
r r yj
xj yj  g 1 ðxj Þ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ
uj ¼ ; f ðuj ; tÞ ¼ ; ¼ ½Df ðsðtÞÞ  NCej
yj ryj  rxj
ð19Þ
88 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90

Fig. 7. Schematic circuit realization of a ring of bidirectional coupled memristor-based FitzHugh-Nagumo chaotic circuit (N ¼ 3).

where j ¼ 1; 2;    ; N, and Df ðsðtÞÞ denotes the Jacobian matrix eval- si r þ Nam r þ r > 0: ð21bÞ
uated along some the solution sðtÞ in chaotic attractor synchroniza-
From (21a) and (21b), a sufficient condition for synchronization
tion manifold, and ej is considered small. If all eigenvalues of the
of (16) can be verified as
real matrix ½Df ðsðtÞÞ  Nam Þ have negative real parts, then ej ¼ 0
si  r
is a stable point and the coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo neurons will am > ; ð22aÞ
synchronize. The characteristic equation of ½Df ðsðtÞÞ  N am Þ is N
and
k2 þ ðsi þ Nam þ rÞk þ si r þ Nam r þ r ¼ 0: ð20Þ
si  1
The eigenvalues of the characteristic Eq. (20) have negative real am > : ð22bÞ
N
parts if
When we consider the two bidirectional coupled memristor-
si þ Nam þ r > 0; ð21aÞ based FitzHugh-Nagumo circuits, the normalized equations are
and represented as

2 2

1 1

0 0
x2

x2

-1 -1

-2 -2
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
x1 x1

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 8. (a) Unsynchronized motion in (x1  x2 ) plane for am ¼ 0:001 < 0:025 and bm ¼ 0:05; (b) Synchronized motion in (x1  x2 ) plane for am ¼ 0:05 and bm ¼ 0:001;
(c) Bifurcation diagram of (x1  x2 ) vs. am , in the case of the coupled neurons, for bm ¼ 0; (d) Bifurcation diagram of (x1  x2 ) vs. bm , in the case of the coupled neurons, for
am ¼ 0:01. In all cases the following parameters and initial conditions of Eq. (15) have been used: a ¼ 1:03, b ¼ 0:5, r ¼ 0:98, F 2 ¼ 0:15, x ¼ 0:75,
½x1 ð0Þ; y1 ð0Þ; x2 ð0Þ; y2 ð0Þ ¼ ½0:001; 0; 0:002; 0:005.
 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90 89

8
> x_ 1 ¼ y1  g 1 ðx1 Þ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ  g 2 ðx1  x2 Þ; mode whenam > 0:025. The synchronization of the two coupled
>
>
>
> y_ 1 ¼ ry1  rx1 ; neurons can’t occur when am ¼ 0:01 < 0:025 and 0 6 bm 6 1 (see
>
>
>
< x_ ¼ y  g ðx Þ þ ðF =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ þ g ðx  x Þ; Fig. 8(d)). It presents also a sufficient condition for chaos synchro-
2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2
> y_ 2 ¼ ry2  rx2 ; nization of the two bidirectional coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo neu-
>
>
>
> rons, provided that the coupling memristor parameter am
>
> g ðxÞ ¼ ½bx þ 0:5ða  bÞðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ;
>
: 1 satisfied certain condition.
g 2 ðx1  x2 Þ ¼ ½bm ðx1  x2 Þ þ 0:5ðam  bm Þðjx1  x2 þ 1j  jx1  x2  1jÞ: When we consider three neurons under the same external stim-
ð23Þ uli coupled with the same memristor junction as shown in Fig. 7,
the normalized equations can be represented as
According to (22a) and (22b), the synchronization condition of 8
the neurons can be obtained as am > si2r ¼ 0:025 when we choose >
> x_ 1 ¼ y1  g 1 ðx1 Þ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ  g 2 ðx1  x2 Þ þ g 2 ðx3  x1 Þ;
>
>
the same parameter given in Section 2. As shown in Fig. 8(a), for >
> y_ 1 ¼ ry1  rx1 ;
>
>
am ¼ 0:001 < 0:025 and bm ¼ 0:05, the synchronization of the >
>
>
> x_ 2 ¼ y2  g 1 ðx2 Þ þ ðF 2 =x2 Þ sinðxtÞ þ g 2 ðx1  x2 Þ  g 2 ðx2  x3 Þ;
two coupled neurons of system (23) cannot be observed where >
>
< y_ ¼ ry  rx ;
initial condition is set to [0.001,0,0.002,0.005] for 2 2 2

> x_ 3 ¼ y3  g 1 ðx3 Þ þ ðF 2 =x Þ sinðxtÞ  g 2 ðx3  x1 Þ þ g 2 ðx2  x3 Þ;

> 2
[x1 ð0Þ; y1 ð0Þ; x2 ð0Þ; y2 ð0Þ]. When the coupled memristor parameter >
>
>
is changed to am ¼ 0:05 > 0:025 and bm ¼ 0:001, a complete syn- >
>
> y_ 3 ¼ ry3  rx3 ;
>
>
chronization behavior of the two neurons can be observed in >
> g 1 ðxÞ ¼ ½bx þ 0:5ða  bÞðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ;
>
>
Fig. 8(b). Fig. 8(c) shows the bifurcation diagram of the signal dif- :
g 2 ðxÞ ¼ ½bm x þ 0:5ðam  bm Þðjx þ 1j  jx  1jÞ:
ference (x1  x2 ) with respect to the bifurcation parameter am
when bm ¼ 0. From Fig. 8(c), it is observed that the two coupled ð24Þ
neurons ultimately result in a complete chaotic synchronization

2 2 2

1 1 1

0 0 0
x2

x3

x3
(1)
-1 -1 -1

-2 -2 -2
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2
x1 x2 x1

2 2 2

1 1 1

0 0 0
x2

x3

x3

(2)
-1 -1 -1

-2 -2 -2
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2
x1 x2 x1

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 9. Different attractors in (24). (1) Unsynchronized motion for am ¼ 0 and bm ¼ 0; (2) Synchronized motion for am ¼ 0:03 and bm ¼ 0:01. (a) x1  x2 attractors; (b) x2  x3
attractors; (c) x1  x3 attractors.

Fig. 10. (a) Bifurcation diagram of (x1  x2 ) vs. am , in the case of the coupled neurons, for bm ¼ 0; (b) Bifurcation diagram of (x2  x3 ) vs. am , in the case of the coupled neurons,
for bm ¼ 0; (c) Bifurcation diagram of (x1  x3 ) vs. am , in the case of the coupled neurons, for bm ¼ 0.
90 J. Zhang, X. Liao / Int. J. Electron. Commun. (AEÜ) 75 (2017) 82–90
When we choose the same parameters given in Section 2, chao-
tic synchronization can be occurred if am > si3r ¼ 1=60 in (24).
Fig. 9 shows numerically calculated results for unsynchronization
and synchronization of three neurons in Fig. 7 for the different val-
ues of the parameters am and bm . Fig. 10 shows the bifurcation dia-
grams of the signal difference (x1  x2 ), (x2  x3 ) and (x1  x3 ), with
respect to the bifurcation parameter am for bm ¼ 0. In Fig. 9 and
Fig. 10, the system parameter values of (24) are set to a ¼ 1:03,
b ¼ 0:5, r ¼ 0:98, F 2 ¼ 0:15 and x ¼ 0:75, and the initial condi-
tion is kept to [0.001,0.002,0.001,0.005,0.002,0.001] for
½x1 ð0Þ; y1 ð0Þ; x2 ð0Þ; y2 ð0Þ; x3 ð0Þ; y3 ð0Þ. Numerical simulation results
in Figs. 9 and 10 illustrate that the given parameter condition
am > 1=60 is effectively able to synchronize three neurons, and
synchronization cannot occurred when am < 1=60. It presents a
sufficient condition for chaos synchronization of a network of the
coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo neurons with same memristor synapse,
provided that the coupling memristor parameter am satisfies cer-
tain condition.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we have studied dynamical behavior of networks
of FitzHugh-Nagumo neuronal circuits by employing memristor.
First, we have built the memristor-based circuit of FitzHugh-
Nagumo model, and the two different state equations for the
memristor-based neuron model have also been derived. We have
carefully considered the influence of memristor parameter on the
chaotic dynamics of neuronal circuit. Then the synchronization of
coupled memristor-based neurons with memristor synapse has
also been discussed. Finally, the sufficient conditions of chaos syn-
chronization in unidirectional coupled circuits and bidirectional
coupled circuits have derived respectively, i.e., the coupling mem-
ristor parameter am meets certain condition.
Application of memristor in the coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo
neuronal circuits yields a deep insight into the behaviors of mem-
ristor. We will investigate similar systems of other types of circuits
based memristor or a network of N mutually coupled memristor-
based neurons with different memristor synapses in the future.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the National Key Research
and Development Program of China under Grant 2016
YFB0800601, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China under Grant 61472331.
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