Resilient Design of Networked Control Systems Under Time Delay Switch Attacks, Application in Smart Grid

Industrial control systems are distributed hierarchical networks that share information via an assortment of communication protocols. Such systems are vulnerable to attacks that can cause disastrous consequences. This article focuses on time delay switch (TDS) attacks and shows that cryptographic solutions are ineffective in recovering from the denial of service component of TDS attacks. Therefore, a cryptography-free TDS recovery (CF-TDSR) communication protocol enhancement is developed that leverages adaptive channel redundancy techniques and a novel state estimator, to detect and recover from the destabilizing effects of TDS attacks. Simulation results are conducted to prove that CF-TDSR ensures the control stability of linear time invariant systems and to show the efficacy of CF-TDSR against attacks deployed on multi-area load frequency control components of a distributed power grid.