Structure and control of self-sustained target waves in excitable small-world networks

Small-world networks describe many important practical systems among which neural networks consisting of excitable nodes are the most typical ones. In this paper we study self-sustained oscillations of target waves in excitable small-world networks. A dominant phase-advanced driving (DPAD) method, which is generally applicable for analyzing all oscillatory complex networks consisting of nonoscillatory nodes, is proposed to reveal the self-organized structures supporting this type of oscillations. The DPAD method explicitly explores the oscillation sources and wave propagation paths of the systems, which are otherwise deeply hidden in the complicated patterns of randomly distributed target groups. Based on the understanding of the self-organized structure, the oscillatory patterns can be controlled with an extremely high efficiency.