1
Distributed Fault Detection and Isolation in
Second-Order Networked Control Systems Using
Directional Unknown Input Observer
Aadil Sarwar Khan, Abdul Qayyum Khan, Naeem Iqbal, Ghulam Mustafa, M. Asim Abbasi, Atif Mehmood
Abstract—This paper presents a novel fault detection and
isolation scheme for second-order networked control systems.
The concept of directional unknown input observer (UIO) is
extended to study the distributed fault detection and isolation
(FDI) problem to leverage lower computational requirements
of directional UIO. Two design schemes with global and local
network models are proposed to solve the distributed FDI
problem. Thresholds are computed for the application of the
proposed schemes in a noisy environment. Compared with
existing distributed FDI schemes, the proposed schemes have
lesser computational requirements. Furthermore, both fault
detection and fault isolation are achieved in a single step using
a single observer. The schemes are tested on 9 bus and 39
bus power system models to validate their results. A detailed
comparison with existing FDI schemes is also provided to
establish the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.
Index Terms—Fault Detection, Fault Isolation, Unknown Input
Observer, Networked Controlled Systems, Distributed FDI.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Protection of modern control systems against unfore-
seen events is a major concern due to their contentiously
growing complexity. Automatic detection and isolation of
anomalies is necessary to ensure the desired performance
of any process. For many decades, researchers put their
efforts in development of new FDI tools. Meanwhile, the
systems to be protected have also evolved from a single
independent process to multiple interconnected processes
working in cooperative manner. These interconnected sys-
tems are usually referred as networked-control systems.
Depending upon the type of system to be protected, FDI
schemes can be categorized into two major categories (i)
centralized and (ii) decentralized FDI schemes. We call the
conventional FDI schemes as centralized. This is due to the
fact that these schemes treat the entire system as a single
unit. All measurements are available at a central point to
design the FDI scheme. The entire process consists of a
single unit/process. A detail of these conventional schemes
can be found in [1], [2], [3], [4]. Centralized schemes are
suitable for small-scale systems which are working alone
without any interaction with other systems. However, these
centralized schemes are not much suitable for networked
controlled systems (NCS) as in a network each subsystem
has access to limited number of measurements. Therefore,
decentralized FDI schemes are more suitable for NCS.
Aadil Sarwar Khan Department of Electrical Engineering PIEAS, Pakistan
Email: adilsarwar20@gmail.com
In past decades, many decentralized FDI schemes have
been developed by the researchers . One of the most earliest
attempt can be found in [5], where a distributed approach
is presented in which a bank of observers is designed at
each node with a possession of local subsystem models.
Observers at each node communicate with each other
which increases the communication burden of the scheme.
In [6] a similar approach is presented but this time the
subsystem receives measurements from neighboring nodes.
Observers are designed with global network model at each
node. Due to presence of observer banks the computational
burden was high. In [7], an FDI scheme is proposed for first-
order systems along with a detailed analysis of limitations
of FDI from a system theocratic perspective.
The literature survey of existing decentralized FDI
schemes reveals that the researchers have paid a special
attention to unknown input observer (UIO) based schemes.
This is attributed to the ability of UIO to decouple the
impacted of unwanted inputs/signals from its output. These
decoupling characteristics of UIO can be used not only to
decouple unknown inputs (disturbances) but also to isolate
faults by making them sensitive to one group of faults
and insensitive to another group. Depending upon the
number of sensitive/insensitive faults UIO based schemes
can categorized into two major types. These are known as
generalized observer scheme (GOS) and dedicated observer
schemes (DOS). In GOS a bank of observer is designed
in which each observer is insensitive to one fault and
sensitive to the rest of all. For example, in [8], an GOS
based unknown input observer (UIO) approach is presented
in which a bank of observers at each node is designed
to detect and isolate faults in neighboring nodes. Each
observer is made insensitive to one fault and sensitive to the
rest. The bottleneck of this scheme is its high computational
burden due to presence of more than one observers at
each node in the network. The work is extended by [9],
in which generalized observer scheme is developed for
fault isolation with local network models instead of global
models. The arrangement has reduced the computational
burden to some extent but still multiple observers are to be
designed at each node. In [13], an optimal robust observer
based approach is proposed with a mean square bounded
consensus protocol. In [14], fault isolation in non-linear
networked control systems is achieved. As both [13], [14]
use GOS, the computational burden of these schemes is
high. In [12], a local FDI scheme is proposed in which fault
2
detection observer is designed along with banks of fault
isolation filters.
Unlike GOS, in dedicated observer schemes (DOS) each
UIO is made sensitive to one fault only and the impact
of the rest of faults is decoupled. For example, in [10],
a dedicated observer scheme (DOS) based approach is
proposed. Observer banks are designed at each node like
GOS. The computational burden is high as like GOS, a bank
of observers has to be designed at each node. A reduced-
order observer based scheme is proposed by [11] to further
relax the problem computational burden to some extent. In
conventional literature like [1], DOS based FDI schemes are
not much encouraged due to their lesser design freedom.
It is clear from the literature survey that most of re-
searchers have adopted one of two possible design strate-
gies. In first approach the researchers like [8] have assumed
that the mathematical model of entire network is known for
design of FDI scheme. The main advantage of this scheme is
less communication cost as only local 1-hop measurements
are used. The second approach used by researchers like
[9], [5] etc, assumes only a local mathematical model of
1-hop network is available. The computational burden of
this arrangement is also less. However, the communication
cost of this approach is high due additional communication
requirements. This scheme is useful for large scale complex
systems where entire network model is not known.
The motivation for this research work lies in the manifold
shortcomings of the previously proposed techniques with
unknown input observer. As discussed above in both dedi-
cated observer and generalized observer schemes banks of
observers are designed at each node which increases the
computational burden. Also, depending on the number of
neighbors, the computational burden is different at every
node causing an uneven demand for allocation of com-
putational resources throughout the network. To address
these issues one needs a novel approach to deal with the
problem of distributed FDI in NCS. We shall consider the
second order networked systems with double integrator
dynamics as many practical systems like power system,
transportation network and robotic swarms etc. need this
type of representation.
In this paper, we present a novel scheme for distributed
FDI problem. We use the concepts of directional unknown
input observer for fault isolation. Only a single observer is
designed at each node which can detect and isolate the
faults of its neighboring nodes. The contributions of our
work can be summarized as:
• Achievement of fault detection and fault isolation in a
single step using a single observer.
• Extension of directional unknown input observer for
networked control systems to develop novel distributed
FDI approaches.
• Two FDI approaches are presented for complete/global
network model and partial/local network model infor-
mation.
• Reduction in the computational burden of isolation
schemes for networked systems is achieved.
• Uniform allocation of computational resources
throughout the network is assured
• FDI Thresholds are computed for application of
scheme in noisy environment to avoid false alarms
This paper is organized in the following manner. In the next
section (section II), the main problems to be addressed
are formulated. Also, the basics of networked controlled
systems are introduced. In section III, the main techniques
from fault detection and isolation (FDI) literature are briefly
introduced. Basic definitions and conditions related to
directional unknown input observer (UIO) are discussed.
These tools are further extended in section IV to solve the
distributed FDI problem for network control systems with
the complete network model. As for very large networks it is
very difficult to achieve a global network model therefore in
section V the scheme is extended for local network models.
In section VI, the mathematical model of the power network
is discussed for application of the proposed techniques.
Next, section VII contains the simulations for both global
and local models. In section VIII, we include a detailed
comparison of proposed techniques with previously existing
techniques. Finally, in section IX, we conclude our work
with some future directions.
II. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
We consider a network of N interconnected subsystems.
Each subsystem is modeled as a node on an underlying
∆
graph represented by G (V , E ). Where V = {i }iN=1 are the
vertexes of the graph G and i ∈ V . The term E represents
the set of edges given by E ⊆ V × V . If any two nodes, say
i and j , have a communication link between them then
an undirected edge with a positive associated weight ωi j is
incident to these nodes which is given by the set {i , j } . For
directed graphs this is given by an ordered pair (i , j ) where
communication is only directed from i to j .
p
Definition 1. The set of nodes given by Ni is called the
p
p-hop network of node i . If any node v ∈ Ni , the overall
length of the path between i and v will be p .
We further define a subgraph of node i as G˚i (V˚i , E˚i ) ⊆
G (V , E ) containing any node i and its neighboring 1-hop
nodes Ni = { j ∈ V˚i : {i , j } ∈ E˚i } also |Ni | = Ni and |V˚i | = V̊i .
We assume each subsystem in the network having second
order dynamics given by:
ψ̇i (t ) =φi (t )
(1)
φ̇i (t ) =u i (t ) + v i (t )
Here v i (t ), ψi (t ) and φi (t ) represent the external input and
states of the node i ; respectively. For power system power
system these states represent generator speed and fre-
quency and for systems transportation system and robotic
swarms these are position and velocity of a vehicle/robot
respectively. The linear control law u i (t ) is governed by the
following equation:
u i (t ) = −αi φi (t ) + ωi j (ψ j (t ) − ψi (t )) + βi (Φ j (t ) − φi (t ))
X £ ¤
j ∈Ni
(2)
 3

Where αi , βi ≥ 0 and ωi j > 0 are weights for i , j = 1, ..., Ni . Definition 2. The system (7) with control law (2) is said
This control law is in fact a generalization of two basic to have achieved consensus if limt →∞ ||x i (t ) − x j (t )|| = 0 for
control laws for distributed systems. These are given as: ∀i , j ∈ V and i 6= j . Here each x(t ) = [ψ(t ) φ(t )]T [15].

u i 1 (t ) = −αi φi (t ) + ωi j (ψ j (t ) − ψi (t ))
X £ ¤
(3)
j ∈Ni
ωi j (ψ j (t ) − ψi (t )) + βi (φ j (t ) − φi (t ))
X £
u i 2 (t ) =
j ∈Ni
The control law (3) is useful when only position state
measurements of the of neighbors are available on a node.
Whereas, control law (4) can only be used when both
relative position and relative velocity measurements are
available. To study further about control laws and their
weight selection procedures the reader is referred to [15].
The faulty dependent model of any node i ∈ V with any
faults f φi (t ) and f ψi (t ) is given as:
ψ̇i (t ) = φ(t ) + f ψi (t )
φ̇i (t ) = u i (t ) + v i (t ) + f φi (t )
Now, by substituting equation (2) in (5) and writing the
dynamics in matrix format gives
ẋ i (t ) =A i x i (t ) + A j x j (t ) + B i v(t ) + E f i f i (t )
Definition 3. The consensus equilibria of system (7) is
defined as x̄ = [ψ̄ φ̄]T ⊗ 1N where ⊗ is the Kronecker
product, ψ̄(t ) = limt →∞ ψi (t ), φ̄(t ) = limt →∞ φi (t ) and 1N
¤
(4)
is the column vector wit all entries equal to one.
Definition 4. For given system (7) the faults given by f (t ) =
[ f (t ), f 2 (t )... f k f ]T is said to be detectable and isolable if:
·1 ¸
sI − A E f
= n +kf
C 0
In this paper we’ll address the following two problems:
Problem 1. With a global network model available, how
each node "i " can detect and isolate multiple simultaneous
faults appearing on nodes V˚ ∈ G˚i (V˚i , E˚i ) with less com-
(5) putational burden and even allocation of computational
resources?
Problem 2. How to design an FDI scheme for networked
control systems with partial or local network model when
(6) global network model is not available.

Now we will introduce the basic tools and techniques

· ¸ · ¸
0 1 0 0
Where, A i = , Aj = , required to solve these problems.
−ωi j −βi ωi j − αi ωi j βi ωi j
· ¸ · ¸
0 1 0
Bi = and E f i = and the vectors x i (t ) =
1 0 1 III. U NKNOWN I NPUT O BSERVER B ASICS
[ψi (t ) φi (t )]T , x j (t ) = [ψ j (t ) φ j (t )]T represents the states
of node i (node under consideration) and node j (neighbors In this section, we will discuss the fundamental tools
of node i ) respectively. Similarly, f i (t ) = [ f ψi (t ) f φi (t )]T required for fault detection and isolation purpose. We are
represents fault vector for node i . In same manner we can using the unknown input observer for fault detection due
write the dynamics of each node and combine those to to its ability to decouple the impact of undesired input
formulate the dynamics of entire network as: signals. For isolation purpose there are number of options
available in FDI literature including the dedicated ob-
ẋ(t ) =Ax(t ) + B v(t ) + E f f (t ) server schemes, generalized observer schemes and direction
(7)
y(t ) =C x(t ) residual schemes [2]. However, for the current study, we
will use the concept of directional residual schemes for
Here, the states vector is given as x(t ) =
fault isolation due to its lesser computational requirements.
[ψ1 (t ), ...., ψN (t ), φ1 (t )..., φN (t )]T , output vector is y(t ) ∈ Rp
Consider a system with state-space representation given as:
and f (t ) ∈ Rk f represents faults in the network. The system
matrices are given as: ẋ(t ) =Ax(t ) + B v(t ) + E f f (t ) + E d d (t )
· ¸ · ¸ (8)
0N IN 0N y(t ) =C x(t )
A= ,B =
−L −αI N − βL IN
Here, the vector d (t ) ∈ Rkd represents the unknown distur-
Here, L is the Laplacian matrix of the underlying graph bances which we want to decouple. Also, x(t ) ∈ Rn , A ∈
∆
G (V , E ) which is defined as: L = ∆ − Ad . Where Ad is the Rn×n ,C ∈ Rpxn , f (t ) = [ f 1 (t ), f 2 (t )... f k f (t )]T and y(t ) ∈ Rp .
adjacency matrix with positive entries [Ad ]i j reflecting the E f ∈ Rn×k f is the fault distribution matrix. The full order
weights of corresponding edge existing between {i , j } or UIO can be defined for this system as:
for directed graphs (i , j ). Whereas, the degree matrix ∆ is
diagonal in nature with: ż(t ) =F z(t ) + T B v(t ) + K y(t )
(9)
( x̂(t ) =z(t ) + H y(t )
deg(i ) , i = j
[∆]i j =
0 , i 6= j The output of the filter in (9) x̂(t ) is the estimated state
of the system. The matrices F ,T ,K and H are chosen
Where deg(i ) is the degree of node i which shows the
according to following relationships:
total associated weight with it. C i = [c ψ1 , c ψ2 ...c ψ j , c φ1 ...c φ j ]T
for j ∈ Ni and each c k j is the column of identity matrix F = (A − HC A − K 1C ), T = (I − HC )
corresponding to kt h state of the node j .. (10)
K = K1 + K2, K2 = F H , (HC − I )E d = 0,
4
The matrix K 1 in (10) is free parameter chosen such that
the poles of (9) or eigenvalues of F are stable. Then the
error dynamics of the system can be given as:
e(t ) =x(t ) − x̂(t )
ė(t ) =F e(t ) − T E f f (t )
r (t ) =C e(t )
Where r (t ) is called the residual. Clearly in the absence of
fault f (t ) and for a stable F the error dynamics (11) will
approach to zero e(t ) → 0 as t → ∞ with a convergence
speed depended upon the eigenvalues of F .
Proposition 1. For system (8), there exists a UIO (9) with
its parameters given by (10) if and only if:
1) r ank(C E d ) = r ank(E d )
2) (C , A − HC A) is a detectable pair.
When these two conditions are met then an UIO can be
used to detect the presence of faults f (t ). Now for fault
isolation purpose we introduce the directional UIO.
A. Directional UIO
The directional UIO scheme for isolation of faults is
established when following conditions are satisfied.
Proposition 2. Any fault f i (t ) with fault direction e f i for
i = 1, 2...k f where, e f i are the columns of E f , for system (8)
will be Isolable if it satisfies:
1) The residual r (t ) has a fixed direction in output
space.£ Alternatively it should satisfy the condition
r ank e f i , F e f i , ...., F n−1 e f i = 1 .
¤
2) K 1 should be chosen such that the matrix F in (10)
can be stabilized.
The details about these conditions can be found in [16].
To achieve these goals the K 1 is chosen according to [17]
as:
Ā − K 1C = Λ (12)
Where, Ā = A − HC A and Λ = d i ag [−λ1 , −λ2 , ....−λn ], ∀λi >
0 for i = 1, 2, ...n. Under these conditions any fault f i (t ) will
maintain a fixed direction l i in the output space.
In an ideal situation residual r (t ) = 0 if f (t ) = 0 . However,
in practical situations a residual is non-zero due to presence
of modeling uncertainties, process and output noises and
disturbances etc. Therefore, a threshold setting is used to
detect and isolate the faulty behavior from a healthy one,
such that:
||r (t )|| > Θ if f (t ) = 0
Where Θ is the threshold . There are many methods to
compute this threshold. For our study we are using the
peak value evaluation function given by:
Θ = ||r (t )||peak
Where,
||r (t )||peak := sup||r (t )|| , for t > 0
and Ã
kr
!1/2
r i2 (t )
X
||r (t )|| :=
i =1
With k r represents the total number of residuals generated
by an observer.
IV. P ROPOSED FDI S CHEME FOR F ULL N ETWORK M ODEL
Consider a network of N nodes with dynamics given
(11) by (7). For any node i ∈ G˚i (V˚i , E˚i ) the system can be
reorganized as:
ẋ(t ) =Ax(t ) + B v(t ) + E il o f il o (t ) + E id d i (t )
(13)
y i (t ) =C i x(t ) + η(t )
Where E il o and f il o (t ) are the fault signature and fault
vector corresponding to faulty nodes in j ∈ G˚i (V˚i , E˚i ). E il o
has columns with all entries equal to zero except one cor-
responding to i th entry. E id is the disturbance distribution
matrix and d i (t ) represents unknown inputs or disturbances
which may be decoupled if perfect decoupling is possible.
As described earlier in problem 1 and2 our main goal
is to design a scheme which is capable of isolation of
neighboring faulty nodes in the presence of sensor noise
η(t ). Now as we have proved the existence of conditions of
isolation for external faults now we want to isolate local
faults using a second UIO filter. Consider the following
observer dynamics:
ż(t ) =F i z(t ) + Ti B v(t ) + K i y(t )
(14)
x̂(t ) =z(t ) + Hi y i (t )
Where,
F i = (A − Hi C i A − K i 1C i ) (15)
Ti = (I − Hi C i ) (16)
Ki = Ki 1 + Ki 2 (17)
K i 2 = F i Hi (18)
h i
Hi = E id (C i E id ) + Hi o I − (C i E id )†C i E id (19)
Here, Hi o is a free parameter with appropriate dimensions.
Proposition 3. For network controlled system given by (13)
with C i as the measurement of the neighboring nodes there
exists an UIO given by (14) with parameters given by (15)-
(19).
This proposition can be proved under the assumption
that condition 1 and 2 in proposition 1 hold true with
E id being a full column rank matrix. Note that the case
of rank deficiency the matrix E id can be decomposed into
E id = E id 1 E id 2 . With E id 1 being the full rank matrix can be
decoupled. In both cases, the directional characteristics can
be introduced in the UIO. The proof of this condition will
be provided later in Theorem 2 where this disturbance
decoupling property of UIO is used to isolate the impact of
external inputs to the local network models.
Theorem 1. The unknown input observer given by (14) can
be diagonalized to produce the directional characteristics
according to (12) for FDI in networked control systems at
any node i .
Proof. The first condition in proposition 2 implies:
h i
rank e kl oj , F i e kl oj , ...., F i2N −1 e kl oj = 1
 5

Which can also be written as:
h i
rank e kl oj , ( Ā i − K i 1C i )e kl oj , ...., ( Ā i − K i 1C i )2N −1 e kl oj = 1
Where Ā i = A − Hi C i A. Now from equation (12)
represents the local state space model for node i contain-
ing 2-hop network. We also define a boundary vertex set
B(V˜i ) ⊆ V˜i such that any j ∈ B if { j , j¯} ∈ E and j¯ 6∈ V˜ . Also,
|V˜i | = Ṽi .

A − Hi C i A − K i 1C i = Λi (20) Proposition 4. [9] In the absence of any fault and v(t ) ≡ 0

˜
the term $G
i
(t ) exponentially goes to zero.
So, we have the following modified condition:
h i Proof. The exponential stability of networked system (7)
rank e kl oj , Λi e kl oj , ...., Λ2N
i
−1 l o
ek j = 1 in the absence of faults with control law (2) along with
the conditions of consensus and consensus equilibria in
As Λ is a diagonal matrix all its powers will also yield a
definition 2 and 3 respectively, proves the statement.
diagonal matrix of the same size. Furthermore, the product
of a diagonal square matrix with any vector with only single
non zero entry will result in a vector with a similar basis.
As discussed by [9] the disturbance decoupling charac-
Hence, the rank of the matrix term on the left-hand side
teristics of an UIO given by (14) can be used to decouple
reduces to 1. The second condition of proposition 2 is ˜
the impact of unknown inputs. These external inputs $G (t )
satisfied by choosing the negative diagonal entries of Λi i
can be decoupled provided we have the complete measure-
which are the eigenvalues of (A − Hi C i A − K i 1C i ). From ˜
ments C iG of 2-hop network.
equation (20) the resultant gain matrix is given as:

K i 1 = (A − Hi C i A − Λi )C i† + K i o (I −CC † ) (21) Theorem 2. For local system given by (22) with measure-
˜
ments of 2-hop networks given by C iG there exists an UIO
Where, K i o is a free parameter. (9).

The results of the proposed scheme are summarized in Proof. From the first condition of Proposition (1) for system
following algorithm (22) we must have:
Algorithm 1. With global model (13) at any node i ∈ V
˜
perform following steps. r ank(C iG E i$ ) = r ank(E i$ ) (23)
Step: 1 Design Hi according to (19) by selecting free parameter
Hi o . ˜
As discussed earlier C iG has measurement of both states of
Step: 2 Substitute Hi in (16) and (21) to find Ti and K i 1 .
2-hop network that is j ∈ B(V˚ ) and j ∈ V and E i$ represents
Step: 3 Calculate F i by substituting the values of Hi and K i 1
the unknown inputs to the nodes present on boundary B.
in (15) .
Hence under the condition of E i$ being full ranked the first
Step: 4 Using (18) and (17), calculate K i 2 and K i respectively.
condition of perfect decoupling is satisfied.
Step: 5 Use the parameters found in step 1-4 to design the
desired observer given by (14). For the proof of second condition of Proposition (1)
Step: 6 Design FDI thresholds. implied that let us assume a subgraph G˘ which is actually
induced by the vertex set V˘i = B(V˚i ) and |V˘i | = V̆i . Without
It is evident that in this type of arrangement, we need any loss of generality we can transform the system matrices
global network model to isolate the faulty nodes. However, in the following form:
having a global network model information is practically
very challenging. Now we shall present a distributed FDI  
scheme for partial/local network information. OV˜i ×V˘i
L̊ l˚
· ¸
L̃ = , E i$ =  OV˚i ×V˘i 
 
l˚T L̆
I V˘i
V. P ROPOSED FDI S CHEME FOR PARTIAL N ETWORK M ODEL
Let us consider a proximity graph G˜ of node i containing
2-hop network such that G˚ ⊆ G˜ ⊆ G (V , E ). The dynamics of and
this local model defined by proximity graph for control law 
C˚i OV˚i ×V˘i OV˚i ×V˚i OV˚i ×V˘i

2 written as:  O
˜ ˘ ˘ I V˘i OV˘i ×V˚i OV˘i ×V˘i 
C iG =  Vi ×Vi
 
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
ẋ iG (t ) =A G x i (t ) + B G v(t )G + E i$ $G
i (t )  OV˚ ×V˚ OV˚i ×V˘i C˚i OV˚i ×V˘i


i i
˜ ˜ ˜
(22)
y iG (t ) =C iG x(t ) + ηGi (t ) OV˘i ×V˚i OV˘i ×V˘i OV˘i ×V˚i I V˘i

This is network model in the absence of any fault. Here, the

Then the condition 2 of Proposition (1) for network model
term $(t ) represents the inputs from external network to
(22) with control law (2) can be written as:
our proximity graph. This is an unknown input for current
case. The matrix E i$ gives the distribution of these unknown
˜
sI − A G E i$
" #
inputs with all its entries equal to zero except one j th entry
˜ ˜ ˜ rank = 2Ṽi + rank(E i$ )
corresponding to j t h unknown input. A G i
, B iG and C iG C iG
˜
OV˜i ×V˘i
6

Now the left hand side of this expression can be rewritten

as:
 
sI V̊ OV˚i ×V˘i −I V˚i OV˚i ×V˘i OV˚i ×V˘i
 O sI V̆ OV˘i ×V˚i I V˘i OV˘i ×V˘i 
 V˘i ×V˚i 
 L̊ i l˚ β̊l˚
 
 V̊ ×V̆ p(s) OV˚i ×V˘i 

 l˚T L̆ β̆l˚T q(s) I V˘i 
r ank 
 
 C˚i OV˚i ×V˘i OV˚i ×V˚i OV˚i ×V˘i OV˚i ×V˘i 

 
 O˘ ˘ I V˘i OV˘i ×V˚i OV˘i ×V˘i OV˘i ×V˘i 
 Vi ×Vi  Figure 1: Power system 9 bus model under study.
 OV˚i ×V˚i OV˚i ×V˘i C˚i OV˚i ×V˘i OV˚i ×V˘i 
 
OV˘i ×V˚i OV˘i ×V˘i OV˘i ×V˚i I V˘i OV˘i ×V˘i
angles have very small difference we can linearize and
With p(s) = sI V˚i + β̊L̊ i + α̊, q(s) = sI V˘i + β̆L̆ i + ᾰ, αi = rewrite the system as:
diag[α̊ ᾰ] and βi = diag[β̊ β̆] it is clear from the expres-
m i δ̈i (t ) + d i δ̇i (t ) = − h i j (δi (t ) − δ j (t )) + P mi (t ) (26)
X
sion that all the columns are linearly independent from
j ∈Ni
each other. Hence the rank expression boils down to:
Now, if we consider the underlying graph of power system
V̊i + V̆i + V̊i + V̆i + rank(E i$ ) = 2V˜i + rank(E i$ ) as G (V , E ) with N being the number of nodes and each
node represents a bus in the power system network.
Hence both conditions for existence of an UIO are proved.
By choosing x = [δ1 (t ), ....., δN (t ), δ̇1 (t ), ..., δ̇N (t )] and the
Now, we can summarize the existence of directional char-
input vector v(t ) as [P m1 , ..., P mN ], we have the following
acteristics for fault isolation.
state-space representation of the system.
Theorem 3. The unknown input observer for the local
˜ ẋ(t ) = Ax(t ) + B v(t ) (27)
system (22) with measurements given by C iG can produce · ¸
the directional characteristics for FDI according to (12) at 0N IN £ ¤T
Where A = and B = O N M̄ , D̄ =
any node i . −M̄ L −M̄ D̄ ³ ´
diag(d 1 , ..., d N ) and M̄ = diag m11 , ..., m1 . The power system
Proof. The proof of this theorem is analogous to proof of N
dynamics with fault models can be written as
theorem 1 and hence omitted here for brevity.
ẋ(t ) = Ax(t ) + B v(t ) + E f f (28)
Now, by following the design steps of Algorithm 1 for local
model 22 a directional UIO can be design for distributed With E f having columns of B as fault distribution vectors.
FDI. We have considered the loss of loads and loss of generators
as faults on nodes/buses. These faults may cause oscillation
VI. A PPLICATION TO P OWER S YSTEM in the power system which may lead to the loss of synchro-
nization, causing cascading outages in large geographical
In the this section, we will present details about power areas. All entries of each vector of E f are zero except one
system model on which we shall implement our proposed corresponding to i t h node which is equal to m1 .
i
FDI techniques. In power system model, we assume that
each bus represents a node in the network. The transmis-
VII. S IMULATIONS AND R ESULTS
sion lines are modeled as network edges. It is assumed that
a synchronous machine is present on every node i which A. Global Network Model
is represented by the swing equation [18] as: In this section, we shall provide our results for full
network information in a noisy environment. Like [19]
m i δ̈i (t ) + d i δ̇i (t ) = −
X
P i j + P mi (t ) (24)
j ∈Ni
Gaussian white noise is introduced as sensor noise of PMU’s
(Phaser Measuring Unit). Figure 1 shows the power network
Assuming that the internal and external angles of the model under study. An observer is designed on node 7. It is
machines are almost same. Here, δi (t ) is the power angles assumed that a sudden loss of generation and loss of load
of i th bus. Whereas, d i , m i , P mi and P i j represent occurs on those buses. Threshold is computed as 0.2032 .
the damping coefficients, inertia coefficients, mechanical Results are shown in Figure (2). At 2 and 3 seconds, the node
input and active power flow from bus i to j respectively. 5 and 6 face unit step faults respectively. Using the observer
Considering that there are zero power losses and ground at node 7 both faults are successfully detected and isolated.
admittances and letting Vi = |Vi |∠δi be the complex voltage Hence, simultaneous faults are successfully detected and
of i th bus, P i j or the active power flow between buses, is isolated with a global network model.
given as:
P i j (t ) = h i j sin(δi (t ) − δ j (t )) (25)
B. Local Network model
here h i j = b i j |Vi ||V j | and b i j is the line susceptance be- For local network models we are using New England
tween buses i and j. Under the assumption that the phase 39 bus system model as shown in Figure (3). System

Figure 2: Node 5 and 6 are faulty whereas node 8 is healthy.
Observer is designed on node 7
parameters are taken from MATPOWER [20] toolbox. An
observer is designed at node 18. A local model containing
the info of 2-hop network is formed which contains the
7
nodes 2,3,4,16,17,18,27. Node 3 and 17 are in the 1-hop
network of node 18 and the main objective is to detect and
isolate their faults. Two simultaneous faults occur at node
3 and 17. As shown in Figure (4) both faults have been
detected and isolated successfully by using the local model.
We have to estimate only 14 states instead of complete 78
states and hence the computational burden is reduced.
VIII. C OMPARISON WITH E XISTING T ECHNIQUES
In this section we shall give a brief comparison of our
proposed schemes with previous techniques. All techniques
are compared based on communication cost, computa-
tional burden and modeling requirements. Let’s assume
that the communication cost for a single state is c which
includes all costs related to the measurement and com-
munication of any state. We further assume that this
communication cost is same for each measurement to
be communicated. All cases are compared for isolation of
multiple simultaneous faults.
The results are summarized in table I. It is evident that
for both local and global network models, the proposed
schemes have far lesser computational burden than pre-
vious schemes. We can also observe from table I that
in previously existing schemes, for global system model,
the computational burden increases exponentially with the
increase in the number of nodes. As a result, an uneven
allocation of computational resources is required in those
schemes. Whereas, the proposed global/full network model
scheme address this problem with an even computational
requirement at each node. Although, for proposed local
model schemes the distribution of computational resources
is not perfectly uniform but it still does not vary in an
exponential manner. Hence, proposed schemes have better
results with respect to computational aspects.
It is clear that the communication cost of both proposed
schemes with local and global model is equal to their
corresponding existing techniques. Therefore, the commu-
nication burden is same. In figure 5 a qualitative compar-
ison is shown by defining an FDI resource space among
communication cost, computational burden and required
model information. Both table I and figure 5 illustrate that
the proposed schemes have lesser computational burden
than previous schemes. Finally, among all these proposed
and existing schemes the proposed FDI scheme with local
model has the least computational burden.
Remark 1. In [9], it is described that it is not necessary to
design an observer at each node. Instead, design observers
on minimum possible number of nodes such that all node
in the network fall under their observation. This helps to
reduce the overall computational burden of distributed FDI
schemes to a great extent.
IX. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
In this paper, we have proposed a new scheme for FDI
in networked control systems. Two different approaches
with complete and partial network model information are
8

Figure 3: New England IEEE 39 bus system graphical representation. The red dotted line shows the node 18 on which
observer is designed whereas, blue line shows its proximity 2-hop network.

Table I: Comparison of different FDI schemes for second

order NCS for multiple simultaneous faults
Technique Communication Cost Computational
Requirements
˚
[8],[9](full model) 2c V˚i (22Vi − 1)N
˚
[9](local model) 2c V˜i (22Vi − 1)V˜i
Proposed (full model) 2c V˚i 2N
Proposed (local model) 2c V˜i 2V˜i

Computational Resources

GOS with full model

GOS with local model

Proposed full model scheme

Modeling Information

Proposed scheme with local model

Communication Resources

Figure 5: The FDI resource space to visualize the compar-

ison among different schemes. Each point gives the quali-
tative classification of different FDI scheme with respect to
required resources.

Figure 4: Fault on node 3 and 17 Observers are designed
on node 18
proposed. The main goal of proposed schemes was to
isolate the faulty nodes with a low computational burden.
It is observed that the scheme with a local model and with
measurements from 2-hop neighbors has lesser computa-
tional burden than all previously existing schemes.
 9

Our future work will be focused on the design of the FDI

scheme for uncertain system models and also for higher
order networked control system. Sensor faults and network
edge failures can also be studied.

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