Number estimation of controllers for pinning a complex dynamical network

Number estimation of controllers is a fundamental question in pinning synchronization of complex networks. This paper studies the problem of controller number in synchronizing a complex network of coupled dynamical systems by means of pinning. For a complex network with a symmetric coupling matrix and full coupling between the nodes, we formulate network synchronization via pinning as a linear matrix inequality criterion, and provide a lower bound and an upper bound of the controller number for a given complex network with fixed architecture. Several numerical examples with Barabási-Albert network topologies are provided to verify our theoretical results.