Reducing Attack Opportunities Through Decentralized Event-Triggered Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decentralized event-triggered control mechanism that reduces network connection time and communication costs, enhancing security and stability in multi-agent systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel event-triggered protocol that minimizes network connection duration based on local info, applicable to undirected connected graphs, and ensures stability.

Findings

Reduces network connection time and communication costs.

Ensures stability in attack-free scenarios.

Applicable to undirected, connected communication graphs.

Abstract

Decentralized control systems are widely used in a number of situations and applications. In order for these systems to function properly and achieve their desired goals, information must be propagated between agents, which requires connecting to a network. To reduce opportunities for attacks that may be carried out through the network, we design an event-triggered mechanism for network connection and communication that minimizes the amount of time agents must be connected to the network, in turn decreasing communication costs. This mechanism is a function of only local information and ensures stability for the overall system in attack-free scenarios. Our approach distinguishes itself from current decentralized event-triggered control strategies by considering scenarios where agents are not always connected to the network to receive critical information from other agents and by considering scenarios where the communication graph is undirected and connected. An algorithm describing this network connection and communication protocol is provided, and our approach is illustrated via simulation.