Time Synchronization Attack in Smart Grid: Impact and Analysis

Author

Zhenghao Zhang ; Shuping Gong ; Dimitrovski, Aleksandar D. ; Husheng Li

Author_Institution

Sch. of Phys. & Electron. Eng., Guangzhou Univ., Guangzhou, China

Volume

4

Issue

1

fYear

2013

fDate

Mar-13

Firstpage

87

Lastpage

98

Abstract

Many operations in power grids, such as fault detection and event location estimation, depend on precise timing information. In this paper, a novel Time Synchronization Attack (TSA) is proposed to attack the timing information in smart grid. Since many applications in smart grid utilize synchronous measurements and most of the measurement devices are equipped with global positioning system (GPS) for precise timing, it is highly probable to attack the measurement system by spoofing the GPS. The effectiveness of TSA is demonstrated for three applications of phasor measurement unit (PMU) in smart grid, namely transmission line fault detection, voltage stability monitoring and event locationing. The validity of TSA is demonstrated by numerical simulations.

Keywords

fault diagnosis; phasor measurement; power system security; power system stability; power transmission faults; power transmission lines; smart power grids; synchronisation; voltage measurement; GPS spoofing; PMU; TSA effectiveness; event location estimation; event locationing; fault detection; global positioning system; measurement devices; phasor measurement unit; smart power grid; synchronous measurements; time synchronization attack; timing information; transmission line fault detection; voltage stability monitoring; Correlation; Fault detection; Global Positioning System; Power transmission lines; Smart grids; Synchronization; Transmission line measurements; GPS spoofing; smart grid; synchronized monitoring; time synchronization attack;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1949-3053

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TSG.2012.2227342

Filename

6400273