Design of a Cosimulation Platform With Hardware-in-the-Loop for Cyber-Attacks on Cyber-Physical Power Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a real-time cosimulation platform with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) for performing cyber-physical power system (CPPS) analyses based on RT-LAB and OPNET software. The platform is capable of simulating a power grid and communication network while also reflecting the impact of actual devices and cyber-attacks on the power system. Furthermore, modelling and implementation methods focused on distributed denial of service (DDOS) and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks in a communication network are elaborated. A case study of DDOS and MITM attacks in a typical CPPS is demonstrated based on this platform. The simulation results validate the capability of the platform and also show the importance of considering the separate impacts of the communication system, actual devices and cyber-attack in power system simulations.

Keywords

• Cyber-physical system
• cyber-attack
• cosimulation
• hardware-in-the-loop
• smart grid