Preventing Time-Delay Switch Attack on Load Frequency Control in Distributed Power Systems

A time-delay switch (TDS) attack on a control system is caused by adversaries that strategically imbed time delays into such systems. TDS attacks can make a control system, or more specifically a distributed power control system, unstable. Time delays can be introduced in the sensing loop (SL) or control lines. This paper describes a novel, simple, and effective method to thwart TDS attacks on SL. The proposed method works by augmenting the controller with a time-delay estimator to estimate any time delays. The modified controller controls the system under TDS attack. Also, the time-delay estimator will track time delays introduced by an adversary using a modified model reference control with an indirect supervisor and a modified least mean square minimization technique.