LAUSR

This paper is concerned with passivity of a class of delayed neural networks. In order to derive less conservative passivity criteria, two Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals (LKFs) with delay-dependent matrices are introduced by taking into consideration a second-order Bessel–Legendre inequality. In one LKF, the system state vector is coupled with those vectors inherited from the second-order Bessel–Legendre inequality through delay-dependent matrices, while no such coupling of them exists in the other LKF. These two LKFs are referred to as the coupled LKF and the noncoupled LKF, respectively. A number of delay-dependent passivity criteria are derived by employing a convex approach and a nonconvex approach to deal with the square of the time-varying delay appearing in the derivative of the LKF. Through numerical simulation, it is found that: 1) the coupled LKF is more beneficial than the noncoupled LKF for reducing the conservatism of the obtained passivity criteria and 2) the passivity criteria using the convex approach can deliver larger delay upper bounds than those using the nonconvex approach.