A Probabilistic Characterization of Random and Malicious Communication Failures in Multi-Hop Networked Control

TL;DR

This paper develops a probabilistic framework to analyze and ensure the stability of multi-hop networked control systems under complex, correlated, and malicious transmission failures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel probabilistic characterization of network failures, including malicious attacks, and derives stability conditions for control systems over such networks.

Findings

Probabilistic bounds effectively model correlated failures.

Stability conditions accommodate malicious and random failures.

Results validated through multiple network scenarios.

Abstract

The control problem of a linear discrete-time dynamical system over a multi-hop network is explored. The network is assumed to be subject to packet drops by malicious and nonmalicious nodes as well as random and malicious data corruption issues. We utilize asymptotic tail-probability bounds of transmission failure ratios to characterize the links and paths of a network as well as the network itself. This probabilistic characterization allows us to take into account multiple failures that depend on each other, and coordinated malicious attacks on the network. We obtain a sufficient condition for the stability of the networked control system by utilizing our probabilistic approach. We then demonstrate the efficacy of our results in different scenarios concerning transmission failures on a multi-hop network.