Self-sustained oscillations in a ring array of coupled lossless transmission lines

In this paper, we derive a neutral difference-differential system with diffusion which arises from a ring array of coupled lossless transmission lines. We investigate the problem of self-sustained oscillations of the considered transmission lines and apply a global Hopf bifurcation theorem to establish the existence of multiple large amplitude phase-locked periodic solutions in the corresponding neutral system. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.