Distributed Cyber-Attack Detection in the Secondary Control of DC Microgrids

The paper considers the problem of detecting cyber-attacks occurring in communication networks typically used in the secondary control layer of DC microgrids. The proposed distributed methodology allows for scalable monitoring of a microgrid and is able to detect the presence of data injection attacks in the communications among Distributed Generation Units (DGUs) - governed by consensus-based control - and isolate the communication link over which the attack is injected. Each local attack detector requires limited knowledge regarding the dynamics of its neighbors. Detectability properties of the method are analyzed, as well as a class of undetectable attacks. Some results from numerical simulation are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.