Spoofing attack on synchrophasor GPS clock: Impact and detection in power system state estimation

Abstract

State estimators process the field measurements to estimate the system states. Synchrophasor measurements, with its time-stamped data, can be included in the state estimation algorithm to improve the estimator performance. Processing large number of measurements at a single processor increases its computational complexity. Two level parallel estimation algorithms, based on some decomposition-coordination strategy, can be utilized to overcome this drawback. PMU measurements can also be utilized to adjust the area angles, apart from being used as input measurements, in the coordination step of such parallel algorithms. However, PMUs are prone to cyber attacks, like GPS spoofing attack. This paper studies the impact of GPS spoofing attack on synchrophasor-assisted power system state estimation algorithm at the estimation level as well as the coordination level. A test set-up using actual field devices is developed to emulate a real-time attack. An attack detection and handling strategy is also discussed.