GPS spoofing effect on phase angle monitoring and control in a real-time digital simulator-based hardware-in-the-loop environment

Abstract

In recent years, cyber-physical system (CPS) applications have been extensively utilised in the electric power grid to enable wide-area protection, control, and monitoring of power systems. Many of these applications in a smart grid CPS depend on reliable time synchronisation. For example, synchrophasor data from geographically distributed phasor measurement units (PMU) utilise global positioning system (GPS) for precise timing. However, these units are exposed to GPS time spoofing attacks that can lead to inaccurate monitoring and trigger unnecessary, and possibly destabilising, remedial control actions. The authors develop an end-to-end case study demonstrating the effect of GPS spoofing attacks on the phase angle monitoring and control functions of a PMU-based load shedding scheme. The evaluation of authors attack strategy is performed in a hardware-in-the-loop real-time digital simulator-enabled power system testbed.

Keywords

• smart power grids
• Global Positioning System
• hardware-in-the loop simulation
• phasor measurement
• power system control
• digital simulation
• synchronisation
• telecommunication security
• cyber-physical systems
• GPS spoofing effect
• phase angle monitoring
• phase angle control
• cyber-physical system
• wide-area protection
• power system monitoring
• power system control
• reliable time synchronisation
• smart grid CPS
• geographically distributed phasor measurement units
• synchrophasor data
• Global Positioning System
• GPS time spoofing attacks
• control functions
• PMU-based load shedding scheme
• hardware-in-the-loop real-time digital simulator-enabled power system testbed