Collaborative Research: Cyber-secure and Resilient Supervisory Control of Networked Discrete-Event Systems

随着计算机技术、通信技术和控制技术的飞速发展，现代工程系统由许多分布式和网络化的物理对象、控制单元和其他设备组成。这些网络系统容易受到网络攻击。该项目的主要目标是开发正式的方法，以综合控制逻辑的网络安全和弹性控制的网络动态系统受到攻击的通信，传感或驱动基础设施。通过提供正式的方法来检测网络攻击，并为网络系统合成可证明弹性的控制逻辑，这项工作将提高先进控制系统的可靠性和性能，这些系统将复杂的控制逻辑嵌入其控制结构中。该项目的开发将以模型为基础，从而确保其适用于受到网络攻击的一大类技术网络系统。特别是，电网与可再生能源和电动汽车的高渗透率将被认为是一个技术领域，具有相当大的社会重要性。所提出的方法，以综合网络安全和弹性控制逻辑在控制系统的监督层的科学基础是控制和诊断的控制工程中开发的事件驱动系统的理论。网络控制系统将在具有离散状态空间和事件驱动动态的过渡系统或离散事件系统的框架中建模。复杂控制系统高层的监督控制将被设计为确保离散模型满足一组与安全属性和活性属性相关的给定逻辑规范，并且能够抵御对通信基础设施或传感器和执行器本身的网络攻击。为了检测网络攻击和其他故障，离散事件系统的可诊断性理论将扩展到网络系统的传感器和执行器的联合攻击。该研究计划融合了来自控制工程中形式化方法的监督控制技术和来自理论计算机科学中离散博弈的算法技术。除了该项目的理论和算法组成部分外，研究人员还将研究可再生能源和电动汽车高度渗透的智能电网的应用领域，其中本文制定的控制和诊断问题高度相关。在这个应用领域的工作将涉及建模，测试在这些模型上开发的综合方法，并建立一个模拟测试平台，用于对开发的方法进行性能评估。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

With the rapid development of computer, communication, and control technologies, modern engineering systems consist of many distributed and networked physical plants, control units, and other devices. These networked systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks. The principal objective of this project is to develop formal methodologies to synthesize control logic for cyber-secure and resilient control of networked dynamic systems subject to attacks on their communication, sensing, or actuation infrastructure. By providing formal methodologies to detect cyber attacks and synthesize provably-resilient control logic for networked systems, this work will enhance the reliability and performance of advanced control systems that embed complex control logic in their control structure. The developments in this project will be model-based, thereby ensuring their applicability to a large class of technological networked systems subject to cyber attacks. In particular, power grids with high penetration of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles will be considered, a technological area of considerable societal importance.The scientific foundation of the proposed approach to synthesizing cyber-secure and resilient control logic at the supervisory layer of the control system is the theory of control and diagnosis of event-driven systems developed in control engineering. Networked control systems will be modeled in the framework of transition systems with discrete state spaces and event-driven dynamics, or discrete event systems. Supervisory control at the higher layer of complex control systems will be designed to ensure that the discrete model satisfies a set of given logical specifications related to safety properties and liveness properties and are resilient to cyber attacks on the communication infrastructure or on sensors and actuators themselves. To detect cyber attacks and other faults, the theory of diagnosability of discrete event systems will be extended to networked systems subject to joint sensor and actuator attacks. The research plan blends supervisory control techniques from formal methods in control engineering with algorithmic techniques from discrete games in theoretical computer science. In addition to the theoretical and algorithmic components of this project, the researchers will investigate the application area of smart power grids with high penetration of renewables and electric vehicles, where the control and diagnosis problems formulated herein are highly relevant. Work in this application area will involve modeling, testing of the synthesis methodologies developed on these models, and construction of a simulation testbed for performance evaluation of the developed methodologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.