Regulating synchronous states of complex networks by pinning interaction with an external node

To shed light on how biological and technological systems can establish or maintain a synchronous functioning, we address the problem of how to engineer an external pinning action on a network of dynamical units. In particular, we study the regulation of a network toward a synchronized behavior by means of a bidirectional interaction with an external node that leaves unchanged its inner parameters and architecture. We demonstrate that there are two classes of networks susceptible of being regulated into a synchronous motion and provide a simple method, for each one of them, to properly design a pinning sequence to achieve regulation. We also discuss how the obtained sequence can be compared with a topological ranking of the network nodes.