Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed of a Distributed Consensus Multi-Agent System Control under Deception and Disruption Cyber-Attacks

The impact of communication disturbances on microgrids (MGs) needs robust and scalable Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure for efficient MG control. This work builds on advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide a practical platform for testing the impact of various cyber-attacks on a distributed control scheme for a Multi-Agent System (MAS). This paper presents a Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop (CHIL) testbed to investigate the impact of various cyber-attacks and communication disruptions on MGs. A distributed consensus secondary control scheme for a MAS within an MG cyber-physical system (CPS) is proposed. The proposed cyber-physical testbed integrates a real-time islanded AC microgrid on RT-Lab, secondary controllers implemented on single-board computers, and an attacker agent on another single-board computer. Communication occurs via a UDP/IP network between OPAL-RT and controller agents, as well as between the agents. Through meticulous experimentation, the efficacy of the proposed control strategy using the developed platform is validated. Various attacks were modeled and launched including deception attacks on sensors, actuators, and their combinations, as well as disruption attacks. The ramifications of both deception and disruption cyber-attacks on system performance are analyzed.