Highly synchronized noise-driven oscillatory behavior of a FitzHugh-Nagumo ring with phase-repulsive coupling

We investigate a ring of $N$ FitzHugh--Nagumo elements coupled in emph{phase-repulsive} fashion and submitted to a (subthreshold) common oscillatory signal and independent Gaussian white noises. This system can be regarded as a reduced version of the one studied in [Phys. Rev. E textbf{64}, 041912 (2001)], although externally forced and submitted to noise. The noise-sustained synchronization of the system with the external signal is characterized.