LAUSR

This paper focuses on the design of a pinning sampled-data control mechanism for the exponential synchronization of directed coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks (CRDNNs) with sampled-data communications (SDCs). A new Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) with some sampled-instant-dependent terms is presented, which can fully utilize the actual sampling information. Then, an inequality is first proposed, which effectively relaxes the restrictions of the positive definiteness of the constructed LKF. Based on the LKF and the inequality, sufficient conditions are derived to exponentially synchronize the directed CRDNNs with SDCs. The desired pinning sampled-data control gain is precisely obtained by solving some linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Moreover, a less conservative exponential synchronization criterion is also established for directed coupled neural networks with SDCs. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness and merits of the theoretical results.