Our work on mutual synchronization in electronic systems started in 2013 within a collaboration between the Vodafone Chair Mobile Communications Systems led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. Gerhard Fettweis and the Biological Physics group at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems led by Prof. Dr. Frank Jülicher.
The project was associated to the Bio-path within the research-structure of the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed), an Excellence cluster at the Technical University of Dresden (TUD). One of its goals was to transfer the understanding of biological systems and their function into new approaches to engineering.
Inspired by theoretical and experimental research on a developmental process during embryonic development of vertebrates, affected by a network biochemically mutual coupled cellular oscillators, we developed a dynamical systems model of mutually delay-coupled electronic oscillator networks. As the coordinated sequential formation of the precursors of vertabrea is timed by the network of biochemically coupled cellular oscillators, we could show in our first prototype system that such self-organized synchronization can also be achieved successfully in networks of mutually delay-coupled electronic oscillators.
The collaboration resulted in a series of publications and a patent. We present the derivation of a dynamical systems model for networks of delay-coupled electronic oscillators, with analog and digital signals. Using this model the complex dynamics in such systems can be understood and predicted. Using this knowledge, control over the systems dynamics can be obtained.
Given the necessity to set up demonstrator systems operating at high frequencies and in the presence of large signaling time-delays, resulted in a collaboration with the Chair for Circuit Design and Network Theory led by Prof. Dr. sc. techn. habil. Dipl. Betriebswissenschaften Frank Ellinger at the TUD. Subsequently Dr. Lucas Wetzel and Dr.-Ing. Niko Joram applied for the necessary funding to validate mutual synchronization of electronic oscillators at frequencies of 60 GHz and considerable signaling time-delays.
We would like to thank all the current and former members of this group for their contributions, great spirit and the inspiring atmosphere.