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Henrik Sandberg

Publications and source records attributed to Henrik Sandberg.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Analysis and distributed control of periodic epidemic processes

This paper studies epidemic processes over discrete-time periodic time-varying networks. We focus on the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model that accounts for a (possibly) mutating virus. We say that an agent is in the disease-free state if it is not infected by the virus. Our objective is to devise a control strategy which ensures that all agents in a network exponentially (resp. asymptotically) converge to the disease-free equilibrium (DFE). Towards this end, we first provide a) sufficient conditions for exponential (resp. asymptotic) convergence to the DFE; and b) a necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic convergence to the DFE. The sufficient condition for global exponential stability (GES) (resp. global asymptotic stability (GAS)) of the DFE is in terms of the joint spectral radius of a set of suitably-defined matrices, whereas the necessary and sufficient condition for GAS of the DFE involves the spectral radius of an appropriately-defined product of matrices. Subsequently, we leverage the stability results in order to design a distributed control strategy for eradicating the epidemic.

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Networked Multi-Virus Spread with a Shared Resource: Analysis and Mitigation Strategies

The paper studies multi-competitive continuous-time epidemic processes in the presence of a shared resource. We consider the setting where multiple viruses are simultaneously prevalent in the population, and the spread occurs due to not only individual-to-individual interaction but also due to individual-to-resource interaction. In such a setting, an individual is either not affected by any of the viruses, or infected by one and exactly one of the multiple viruses. We classify the equilibria into three classes: a) the healthy state (all viruses are eradicated), b) single-virus endemic equilibria (all but one viruses are eradicated), and c) coexisting equilibria (multiple viruses simultaneously infect separate fractions of the population). We provide i) a sufficient condition for exponential (resp. asymptotic) eradication of a virus; ii) a sufficient condition for the existence, uniqueness and asymptotic stability of a single-virus endemic equilibrium; iii) a necessary and sufficient condition for the healthy state to be the unique equilibrium; and iv) for the bi-virus setting (i.e., two competing viruses), a sufficient condition and a necessary condition for the existence of a coexisting equilibrium. Building on these analytical results, we provide two mitigation strategies: a technique that guarantees convergence to the healthy state; and, in a bi-virus setup, a scheme that employs one virus to ensure that the other virus is eradicated. The results are illustrated in a numerical study of a spread scenario in Stockholm city.

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Distributed Design of Glocal Controllers via Hierarchical Model Decomposition

This paper proposes a distributed design method of controllers having a glocal (global/local) information structure for large-scale network systems. Distributed design, independent design of all subcontrollers that constitute a structured controller, facilitates scalable controller synthesis. While existing distributed design methods confine attention to the decentralized or distributed information structures, this study addresses distributed design of glocal-structured controllers. Glocal control exploits the nature that network system's behavior can typically be represented as a superposition of spatially local fluctuations and global interarea oscillations by incorporating a global coordinating subcontroller with local decentralized subcontrollers. The key idea to distributed design of glocal controllers is to represent the original network system as a hierarchical cascaded system composed of reduced-order models representing the global and local dynamics, referred to as hierarchical model decomposition. Distributed design is achieved by independently designing and implementing subcontrollers for the reduced-order models while preserving the cascade structure. This paper provides a condition for existence of the hierarchical model decomposition, a specific representation of the hierarchical system, a clustering method appropriate for the proposed approach, and a robust extension. Numerical examples of a power grid evidence the practical relevance of the proposed method.

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Data-Driven Distributed Mitigation Strategies and Analysis of Mutating Epidemic Processes

In this paper we study a discrete-time SIS (susceptible-infected-susceptible) model, where the infection and healing parameters and the underlying network may change over time. We provide conditions for the model to be well-defined and study its stability. For systems with homogeneous infection rates over symmetric graphs,we provide a sufficient condition for global exponential stability (GES) of the healthy state, that is, where the virus is eradicated. For systems with heterogeneous virus spread over directed graphs, provided that the variation is not too fast, a sufficient condition for GES of the healthy state is established.

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Maximizing Privacy in MIMO Cyber-Physical Systems Using the Chapman-Robbins Bound

Privacy breaches of cyber-physical systems could expose vulnerabilities to an adversary. Here, privacy leaks of step inputs to linear-time-invariant systems are mitigated through additive Gaussian noise. Fundamental lower bounds on the privacy are derived, which are based on the variance of any estimator that seeks to recreate the input. Fully private inputs are investigated and related to transmission zeros. Thereafter, a method to increase the privacy of optimal step inputs is presented and a privacy-utility trade-off bound is derived. Finally, these results are verified on data from the KTH Live-In Lab Testbed, showing good correspondence with theoretical results.

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A secure state estimation algorithm for nonlinear systems under sensor attacks

The state estimation of continuous-time nonlinear systems in which a subset of sensor outputs can be maliciously controlled through injecting a potentially unbounded additive signal is considered in this paper. Analogous to our earlier work for continuous-time linear systems in \cite{chong2015observability}, we term the convergence of the estimates to the true states in the presence of sensor attacks as `observability under $M$ attacks', where $M$ refers to the number of sensors which the attacker has access to. Unlike the linear case, we only provide a sufficient condition such that a nonlinear system is observable under $M$ attacks. The condition requires the existence of asymptotic observers which are robust with respect to the attack signals in an input-to-state stable sense. We show that an algorithm to choose a compatible state estimate from the state estimates generated by the bank of observers achieves asymptotic state reconstruction. We also provide a constructive method for a class of nonlinear systems to design state observers which have the desirable robustness property. The relevance of this study is illustrated on monitoring the safe operation of a power distribution network.

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Transfer-Entropy-Regularized Markov Decision Processes

We consider the framework of transfer-entropy-regularized Markov Decision Process (TERMDP) in which the weighted sum of the classical state-dependent cost and the transfer entropy from the state random process to the control random process is minimized. Although TERMDPs are generally formulated as nonconvex optimization problems, we derive an analytical necessary optimality condition expressed as a finite set of nonlinear equations, based on which an iterative forward-backward computational procedure similar to the Arimoto-Blahut algorithm is proposed. It is shown that every limit point of the sequence generated by the proposed algorithm is a stationary point of the TERMDP. Applications of TERMDPs are discussed in the context of networked control systems theory and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The proposed algorithm is applied to an information-constrained maze navigation problem, whereby we study how the price of information qualitatively alters the optimal decision polices.

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Adaptive voltage regulation of an inverter-based power distribution network with a class of droop controllers

The voltage received by each customer connected to a power distribution line with local controllers (inverters) is regulated to be within a desired margin through a class of slope-restricted controllers, known conventionally as \emph{droop} controllers. We adapt the design of the droop controllers according to the known bounds of the net power consumption of each customer in each observation time window. A sufficient condition for voltage regulation is provided for each time window, which guides the design of the droop controllers, depending on the properties of the distribution line (line impedances) and the upper bound of all the customers' power consumption during each time window. The resulting adaptive scheme is verified on a benchmark model of a European low-voltage network by the CIGRE task force.

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Bounding Privacy Leakage in Smart Buildings

Smart building management systems rely on sensors to optimize the operation of buildings. If an unauthorized user gains access to these sensors, a privacy leak may occur. This paper considers such a potential leak of privacy in a smart residential building, and how it may be mitigated through corrupting the measurements with additive Gaussian noise. This corruption is done in order to hide the occupancy change in an apartment. A lower bound on the variance of any estimator that estimates the change time is derived. The bound is then used to analyze how different model parameters affect the variance. It is shown that the signal to noise ratio and the system dynamics are the main factors that affect the bound. These results are then verified on a simulator of the KTH Live-In Lab Testbed, showing good correspondence with theoretical results.

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Asymptotic Security of Control Systems by Covert Reaction: Repeated Signaling Game with Undisclosed Belief

This study investigates the relationship between resilience of control systems to attacks and the information available to malicious attackers. Specifically, it is shown that control systems are guaranteed to be secure in an asymptotic manner by rendering reactions against potentially harmful actions covert. The behaviors of the attacker and the defender are analyzed through a repeated signaling game with an undisclosed belief under covert reactions. In the typical setting of signaling games, reactions conducted by the defender are supposed to be public information and the measurability enables the attacker to accurately trace transitions of the defender's belief on existence of a malicious attacker. In contrast, the belief in the game considered in this paper is undisclosed and hence common equilibrium concepts can no longer be employed for the analysis. To surmount this difficulty, a novel framework for decision of reasonable strategies of the players in the game is introduced. Based on the presented framework, it is revealed that any reasonable strategy chosen by a rational malicious attacker converges to the benign behavior as long as the reactions performed by the defender are unobservable to the attacker. The result provides an explicit relationship between resilience and information, which indicates the importance of covertness of reactions for designing secure control systems.

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Actuator Security Index for Structured Systems

Given a network with the set of vulnerable actuators (and sensors), the security index of an actuator equals the minimum number of sensors and actuators that needs to be compromised so as to conduct a perfectly undetectable attack using the said actuator. This paper deals with the problem of computing actuator security indices for discrete-time LTI network systems. Firstly, we show that, under a structured systems framework, the actuator security index is generic. Thereafter, we provide graph-theoretic conditions for computing the structural actuator security index. The said conditions are in terms of existence of linkings on appropriately-defined directed (sub)graphs. Based on these conditions, we present an algorithm for computing the structural index.

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Disconnection-aware Attack Detection in Networked Control Systems

This study deals with security issues in dynamical networked control systems. The goal is to establish a unified framework of the attack detection stage, which includes the four processes of monitoring the system state, making a decision based on the monitored signal, disconnecting the corrupted subsystem, and operating the remaining system during restoration. This paper, in particular, considers a disconnection-aware attack detector design problem. Traditionally, observer-based attack detectors are designed based on the system model with a fixed network topology and cannot cope with a change of the topology caused by disconnection. The disconnection-aware design problem is mathematically formulated and a solution is proposed in this paper. A numerical example demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed detector through an inverter-based voltage control system in a benchmark model.

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Analysis, Online Estimation, and Validation of a Competing Virus Model

In this paper we introduce a discrete time competing virus model and the assumptions necessary for the model to be well posed. We analyze the system exploring its different equilibria. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the estimation of the model parameters from time series data and introduce an online estimation algorithm. We employ a dataset of two competing subsidy programs from the US Department of Agriculture to validate the model by employing the identification techniques. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to study competing virus models in discrete-time, online identification of spread parameters from time series data, and validation of said models using real data. These new contributions are important for applications since real data is naturally sampled.

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Two-Way Coding and Attack Decoupling in Control Systems Under Injection Attacks

In this paper, we introduce the concept of two-way coding, which originates in communication theory characterizing coding schemes for two-way channels, into control theory, particularly to facilitate the analysis and design of feedback control systems under injection attacks. Moreover, we propose the notion of attack decoupling, and show how the controller and the two-way coding can be co-designed to nullify the transfer function from attack to plant, rendering the attack effect zero both in transient phase and in steady state.

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Noise-Induced Limitations to the Scalability of Distributed Integral Control

We study performance limitations of distributed feedback control in large-scale networked dynamical systems. Specifically, we address the question of how the performance of distributed integral control is affected by measurement noise. We consider second-order consensus-like problems modeled over a toric lattice network, and study asymptotic scalings (in network size) of H2 performance metrics that quantify the variance of nodal state fluctuations. While previous studies have shown that distributed integral control fundamentally improves these performance scalings compared to distributed proportional feedback control, our results show that an explicit inclusion of measurement noise leads to the opposite conclusion. The noise's impact on performance is shown to decrease with an increased inter-nodal alignment of the local integral states. However, even though the controller can be tuned for acceptable performance for any given network size, performance will degrade as the network grows, limiting the scalability of any such controller tuning. In particular, the requirement for inter-nodal alignment increases with network size. We show that this in practice implies that large and sparse networks will require any integral control to be centralized, rather than distributed. In this case, the best-achievable performance scaling, which is shown to be that of proportional feedback control, is retrieved.

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Localized high-order consensus destabilizes large-scale networks

We study the problem of distributed consensus in networks where the local agents have high-order ($n\ge 3$) integrator dynamics, and where all feedback is localized in that each agent has a bounded number of neighbors. We prove that no consensus algorithm based on relative differences between states of neighboring agents can then achieve consensus in networks of any size. That is, while a given algorithm may allow a small network to converge to consensus, the same algorithm will lead to instability if agents are added to the network so that it grows beyond a certain finite size. This holds in classes of network graphs whose algebraic connectivity, that is, the smallest non-zero Laplacian eigenvalue, is decreasing towards zero in network size. This applies, for example, to all planar graphs. Our proof, which relies on Routh-Hurwitz criteria for complex-valued polynomials, holds true for directed graphs with normal graph Laplacians. We survey classes of graphs where this issue arises, and also discuss leader-follower consensus, where instability will arise in any growing, undirected network as long as the feedback is localized.

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Near-Field UHF RFID Transponder with a Screen-Printed Graphene Antenna

As a method of producing RFID tags, printed graphene provides a low-cost and eco-friendly alternative to the etching of aluminum or copper. The high resistivity of graphene, however, sets a challenge for the antenna design. In practice, it has led to using very large antennas in the UHF RFID far field tags demonstrated before. Using inductive near field as the coupling method between the reader and the tag is an alternative to the radiating far field also at UHF. The read range of such a near field tag is very short, but, on the other hand, the tag is extremely simple and small. In this paper, near field UHF RFID transponders with screen-printed graphene antennas are presented and the effect of the dimensions of the tag and the attachment method of the microchip studied. The attachment of the microchip is an important step of the fabrication process of a tag that has its impact on the final cost of a tag. Of the tags demonstrated, even the smallest one with the outer dimensions of 21 mm * 18 mm and the chip attached with isotropic conductive adhesive (ICA) was readable from a distance of 10 mm with an RF power marginal of 19 dB, which demonstrates that an operational and small graphene-based UHF RFID tag can be fabricated with low-cost industrial processes.

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A Network Monitoring Game with Heterogeneous Component Criticality Levels

We consider an attacker-operator game for monitoring a large-scale network that is comprised on components that differ in their criticality levels. In this zero-sum game, the operator seeks to position a limited number of sensors to monitor the network against an attacker who strategically targets a network component. The operator (resp. attacker) seeks to minimize (resp. maximize) the network loss. To study the properties of mixed-strategy Nash Equilibria of this game, we first study two simple instances: (i) When component sets monitored by individual sensor locations are mutually disjoint; (ii) When only a single sensor is positioned, but with possibly overlapping monitoring component sets. Our analysis reveals new insights on how criticality levels impact the players equilibrium strategies. Next, we extend a previously known approach to obtain an approximate Nash equilibrium for the general case of the game. This approach uses solutions to minimum set cover and maximum set packing problems to construct an approximate Nash equilibrium. Finally, we implement a column generation procedure to improve this solution and numerically evaluate the performance of our approach.

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