A False Data Injection Attack Detection Strategy for Unbalanced Distribution Networks State Estimation

• Published in: IEEE transactions on smart grid Vol. 14; no. 5; pp. 3992 - 4006
• Main Authors: Wei, Shuheng, Xu, Junjun, Wu, Zaijun, Hu, Qinran, Yu, Xinghuo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.09.2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Cybersecurity; Distribution networks; False alarms; false data injection attack (FDIA); forecasting-aided state estimation (FASE); innovation vectors; Kalman filters; Likelihood ratio; Mathematical models; Measurement; Meters; Networks; Outliers (statistics); Power measurement; State estimation; Technological innovation; Unbalanced distribution networks
• ISSN: 1949-3053; 1949-3061
• DOI: 10.1109/TSG.2023.3235945

With the advance in communication facilities and information technologies, the state estimation (SE) of distribution networks is subject to intensified cybersecurity threats caused by false data injection attacks (FDIAs). To address the issues, this paper proposes a novel FDIA detection strategy for unbalanced distribution networks. The SE model and corresponding general imperfect FDIA are introduced first to emulate the attacking behavior in practice. To achieve FDIA detection, we propose a square-root unscented Kalman filter (SR-UKF) based forecasting-aided SE (FASE) to generate estimation results. By modifying the filtering step of the proposed FASE into a redundant linear regression form, random outliers can be effectively detected and suppressed by leveraging the projection statistics (PS). Afterward, based on the acquired SE results, a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) is designed to detect FDIAs on consecutive snapshots. In the GLRT, the dynamic time warping (DTW) distance between two innovation sequences is set as the test variable, which is compared with the offline determined detection threshold under a specific false alarm rate. The feasibility of the proposed general imperfect FDIA and the effectiveness of the proposed FDIA detection strategy are validated through extensive numerical simulations.