Limited Information Based Emergency Response Control for Underwater Vehicle Systems With Disturbances and DoS Attacks

This paper focuses on the issue of limited information based emergency response control for a specific category of underwater cyber-physical systems (UCPSs) confronted with multiple emergencies. The focus is on a typical underwater vehicle system (UVS), whose communication with the control center may be compromised by Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. The occurrence of dual DoS attacks leads to significant information loss, intensifying the complexity of decision-making and emergency response during critical situations. Moreover, abrupt ocean current disturbances or faults will also seriously affect the performance of UVSs. Drawing upon distinct DoS attack scenarios, this study introduces a novel emergency response decision mechanism. A limited information-based disturbance observer (DO) is then proposed to effectively handle various unknown disturbances, ensuring favorable disturbance estimation performance. Subsequently, as for different attack channels, two innovative emergency response controllers are respectively proposed, considering the constraints of limited information. Furthermore, distinct stability criteria are derived by using Lyapunov stability and stochastic analysis techniques to guarantee the stabilization of UVSs. Finally, a series of numerical results is presented to illstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm under various emergency scenarios. Note to Practitioners—This study presents an novel framework for emergency automatic control and decision-making in UVSs suffering from different emergencies. While most of previous research primarily concentrated on emergency situations in the physical layer, this article delves into both the information layer and the physical layer to tackle decision-making and response challenges within information-constrained environments. Specifically, a limited information-based DO is designed to dynamically model disturbances, such as ocean currents and actuator faults. The DO adapts its structure based on valuable information obtained from emergency monitoring, ensuring accurate disturbance estimation upon successful transmission. The proposed strategy holds significant practical applicability in UVSs for handling emergencies, and further experimental validations are planned to be conducted on actual underwater vehicles.