Real-Time Controller Reconfiguration for Delay-Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Networks on the cyber-physical systems (CPSs) configure feedback control loops between physical systems in the real world and control software in the cyber world. Malicious behaviors on the networks can increase network delays by exhausting limited network resources and security vulnerabilities to destabilize CPSs, which are entitled the network delay attack. In this paper, we focus on the problem of how to guarantee the stability of CPS under the network delay attack. We propose a real-time controller reconfiguration to ensure the resiliency of the physical systems against the network delay attack. Our controller reconfiguration consists of two algorithms: controller gain tuning and access point (AP) handover, which give a delay tolerance and an attack avoidance, respectively. Depending on the network delays, the computing system adopts one of these two algorithms and mitigates the physical impacts of the network delay attack. We validate that the proposed controller reconfiguration can ensure the resiliency of CPS against the network delay attack by implementing a testbed with wireless networks.INDEX TERMS Attack-resilient CPS, controller reconfiguration, cyber-physical systems, flooding attack.