Robust Fault Detection for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Subject to Denial-of-Service Attacks

Abstract During the flight of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), potential system faults can lead to mission failure or even crashes. Therefore, it is important to equip the ground control station (GCS) with a fault detection module. However, malicious attackers may launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks to interfere with the network communication between UAVs and GCS, which can result in the failure of the fault detection mechanism. This study presents a robust fault detection scheme for UAVs in the presence of DoS attacks. Specifically, a fault detection filter (FDF) is devised to produce residual signals, while a resilient event-triggered mechanism (ETM) is implemented to enhance network bandwidth utilization efficiency and alleviate the adverse effects of DoS attacks. By considering the H∞ performance index and analyzing the exponential stability of the switching residual system, the event triggering parameters and the filter gain matrix are obtained. Furthermore, a detection logic utilizing residuals and thresholds is introduced to facilitate fault detection. Simulation results confirm the viability of this fault detection approach, which is grounded in a resilient event trigger mechanism.