  We study the onset of the propagation failure of wave fronts in systems of
coupled cells. We introduce a new method to analyze the scaling of the critical
external field at which fronts cease to propagate, as a function of
intercellular coupling. We find the universal scaling of the field throughout
the range of couplings, and show that the field becomes exponentially small for
large couplings. Our method is generic and applicable to a wide class of
cellular dynamics in chemical, biological, and engineering systems. We confirm
our results by direct numerical simulations.
