Resilient Networks in Distributed Control Applications

The northern region of Norway has faced disruptions due to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) denial attacks and espionage efforts targeting critical energy infrastructure, impacting aviation safety and exposing vulnerabilities in energy systems. These safety-critical systems increasingly rely on dynamic communication and coordination across networks, which introduces additional cybersecurity risks. Our prior research focuses on consensus, a network-based information-sharing protocol used in coordination algorithms for distributed energy systems (DESs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We demonstrated that by adjusting the algorithm and communication network with network science techniques, we could enhance consensus resilience to malicious signal injection attacks, measured through the H2 and H-infinity norms. However, as a 'low-level' communication protocol, consensus resilience does not ensure resilience across the entire system.

This implies:

• high-level coordination algorithms currently lack a framework for designing resilient networks;
• current methods do not support integrating systems into the design process (e.g., co-design);
• Network structure-based resilience assurances are absent in existing distributed control methods.

The objective of this theme is to develop tools for designing networks for multiagent systems that provide resilience guarantees for the system.