Software-Defined Microgrid Control for Resilience Against Denial-of-Service Attacks

Microgrids (MGs) rely on networked control supported by off-the-shelf wireless communications. This makes them vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. In this paper, we mitigate those attacks by (i) separating data plane from network control plane, inspired by the software defined networking paradigm, and (ii) performing control plane exchanges over the power bus, thus allowing for an agile reconfiguration of the data plane connections. Specifically, in the proposed architecture, all generators in the MG operate as either voltage regulators (active agents), or current sources (passive agents), with their operating mode being determined by software-defined MG control supported by the control plane communication performed over the power bus. For the purpose of control plane communication, we adopt power talk, a modem-less, low-rate, power-line communication solution designed for direct current MGs. The results show that the proposed software-defined MG offers superior performance compared to the static MG, as well as resilience against DoS attacks.