A virtual actuator approach for the secure control of networked LPV systems under pulse-width modulated DoS attacks

In this paper, we formulate and analyze the problem of secure control in the context of networked linear parameter varying (LPV) systems. We consider an energy-constrained, pulse-width modulated (PWM) jammer, which corrupts the control communication channel by performing a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. In particular, the malicious attacker is able to erase the data sent to one or more actuators. In order to achieve secure control, we propose a virtual actuator technique under the assumption that the behavior of the attacker has been identified. The main advantage brought by this technique is that the existing components in the control system can be maintained without need of retuning them, since the virtual actuator will perform a reconfiguration of the plant, hiding the attack from the controller point of view. Using Lyapunov-based results that take into account the possible behavior of the attacker, design conditions for calculating the virtual actuators gains are obtained. A numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed secure control strategy.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Stabilizability and optimal control of switched differential algebraic equations

In this thesis control of dynamical systems with switches is considered. Examples of such systems are electronic circuits and mechanical systems. The switches are induced by abrupt structural changes due to component failure or physical switches. In the case of constraints on the dynamics, the state of the system can only take certain values and not only differential equations are involved in modeling the system, but also algebraic equations. An important question in control problems is often how well a certain controller performs. Some controllers require little energy, but induce undesired behavior of the system, whereas others perform well in terms of the systems behavior but require a lot of energy. It turns out that in general an optimal controller does not exist. However, necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of optimal controller given a quadratic cost functional are presented in this thesis. Besides quantitative properties also some qualitative properties are investigated. The systems considered exhibit discontinuous behavior and Dirac impulses, whereas especially Dirac impulses are practically undesirable. Dirac impulses occur in practice in the form of hydraulic shocks in fluid networks or sparks in electronic circuits. The possibility to avoid Dirac impulses is also studied and necessary and sufficient conditions are given