Blockchain Protocol-Based Predictive Secure Control for Networked Systems

Networked control systems (NCSs) are widely used in practical applications because of their flexibility in deployment. However, due to the dependence on the communication network, NCSs could be vulnerable to malicious cyberattacks. To address this problem, a novel blockchain technology-assisted networked predictive secure control approach is presented for the first time in this article. First, the introduction of blockchain technology brings a significant boost to the inherent resilience of the NCS in an active manner without relying on any prior knowledge of the system or potential attacks. However, blockchain technology would induce time delays unfavorable to the NCS, which could result in the low real-time performance of the control system. Subsequently, a networked Kalman filter-based predictive control is specially designed to compensate for the low real-time property of blockchain technology. A detailed analysis of the security and stability of the closed-loop NCS with the developed networked predictive secure controller is also presented, while sufficient conditions for the closed-loop system to be simultaneously stable and safe in a probabilistic sense are given. Finally, to verify the performance of the proposed approach in terms of practicality, an experimental prototype of a photovoltaic (PV)-based power generation system subjected to random cyber-attacks is built for voltage regulation.