Distributed Event-Based Control for Thermostatically Controlled Loads Under Hybrid Cyber Attacks

• Published in: IEEE transactions on cybernetics Vol. 51; no. 11; pp. 5314 - 5327
• Main Authors: Wan, Ying, Long, Cheng, Deng, Ruilong, Wen, Guanghui, Yu, Xinghuo, Huang, Tingwen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.11.2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Buildings; Communication; Communication networks; Control stability; Cyberattack; Cybersecurity; Decentralized control; Denial of service attacks; Denial-of-service (DoS) attack; Denial-of-service attack; Distributed generation; event-triggered control; false data-injection (FDI) attack; Hybrid control; Hybrid power systems; Microgrids; Parameters; Power consumption; thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs); User requirements
• ISSN: 2168-2267; 2168-2275; 2168-2275
• DOI: 10.1109/TCYB.2020.2978274

In building-microgrid communities, renewable generation and time-varying load usually cause power fluctuations, which influence the ancillary support to the main grid. Thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) can be utilized to compensate such power variations due to their aggregated and controllable power consumptions. Meanwhile, one basic requirement for the users' side of TCLs is to realize the fair sharing of power states and comfort states. This article proposes a distributed event-based control strategy, where information of neighboring TCLs is exchanged only when a dynamic event-triggered condition is satisfied, and thus it intelligently determines the necessary transmission frequency to save communication resources. From a cybersecurity perspective, the communication network of TCLs may be subject to hybrid attacks, for example, denial-of-service (DoS) and false data-injection (FDI) attacks. During DoS attack intervals, no information can be communicated even through the event-triggered condition is satisfied. Furthermore, the control inputs may also be tampered by FDI attacks. By utilizing the Lyapunov stability and hybrid control theories, sufficient conditions regarding the attack parameters are derived such that fair sharing of power states and comfort states of all involved TCLs can be achieved exponentially. The exclusion of Zeno behaviors is proved and a corollary for ideal communication situations is also deduced. Finally, simulation examples with various attack parameters are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the main results.