Critical-Metrics-Based Attack Strategy and Resilient H∞ State Estimator Design for Multi-Area Power Systems

Abstract

This paper discusses the issue of attack-defense framework for multi-area power systems. The primary objective is to propose a novel critical-metrics-based (CMB) attack strategy from the attacker’s perspective to enhance destructiveness. Different from the indiscriminate denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in existing literature (i.e., conducting attacks without considering the information of attack targets and packets), the proposed CMB attack strategy can target important packets in critical areas of the power system, thereby more severe attack impact on system performance is expected. The second aim of this study is to design a resilient $\boldsymbol {H_{\infty }}$ state estimator against the proposed CMB attacks, which can maintain specific system performance in the presence of attacks. By utilizing the Lyapunov functional method, sufficient conditions ensuring asymptotic stability of the augmented error dynamics and $\boldsymbol {H_{\infty }}$ disturbance attenuation performance are successfully obtained. Simulation results on the IEEE 39-bus system demonstrate that the proposed CMB attack strategy inflicts more severe damage on the power system than some existing DoS attack models. Meanwhile, the designed resilient $\boldsymbol {H_{\infty }}$ state estimator can effectively mitigate the negative impact of potential CMB attack strategies.