The document discusses scalability issues related to firefly-based self-synchronization in collective adaptive systems, emphasizing the need for a global time synchronization due to distributed node clock discrepancies. It introduces models of pulse-coupled oscillators and outlines the limitations of existing synchronization methods, proposing selective coupling to reduce network traffic and improve synchronization rates. Simulation results indicate that applying selective coupling can significantly minimize message exchanges and steps needed for achieving synchronization in large-scale machine-to-machine systems.