Co-simulation platform for characterizing cyber attacks in cyber physical systems

Smart grid is a complex cyber physical system containing numerous and variety of sources, devices, controllers and loads. Communication/Information infrastructure is the backbone of the smart grid system where different grid components are connected with each other through this structure. Therefore, the drawbacks of the information technology related issues are also becoming a part of the smart grid. Further, smart grid is also vulnerable to the grid related disturbances. For such a dynamic system, disturbance and intrusion detection is a paramount issue. This paper presents a Simulink and OPNET based co-simulated platform to carry out a cyber-intrusion in a cyber-network for modern power systems and smart grids. The cyber attack effect is also characterized for the physical power system. The effectiveness of the co simulated platform is demonstrated by the IEEE 30 bus power system model. The distributed denial of service attack was carried out in the cyber network to see its effect on the physical network. Different physical fault situations in the test system are considered and the results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed co-simulated scheme