Characterizing direction of coupling from experimental observations

We demonstrate that the direction of coupling of two interacting self-sustained electronic oscillators can be determined from the realizations of their signals. In our experiments, two electronic generators, operating in a periodic or a chaotic state, were subject to symmetrical or unidirectional coupling. In data processing, first the phases have been extracted from the observed signals and then the directionality of coupling was quantitatively estimated from the analysis of mutual dependence of the phase dynamics. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.