Attack-Resilient Pulse-Coupled Synchronization

Synchronization of pulse-coupled oscillators is gaining increased popularity in sensor networks and wireless communications due to its simplicity, implicit scalability, and high energy efficiency. However, most existing results are obtained in the absence of malicious attacks. This paper addresses pulse-coupled synchronization resilient to malicious attacks. Not only is the condition for stealthy attacks obtained, but we also prove analytically that pulse-coupled synchronization can be guaranteed despite the presence of a stealthy attacker, even when legitimate oscillators have different initial phases. This is in distinct difference from most of the existing attack-resilient synchronization algorithms (including the seminal paper from Lamport and Melliar-Smith) that require a priori (almost) synchronization among legitimate nodes. Numerical simulations confirm the theoretical results.