CA-Observability of Discrete Event Systems under Cyber Attacks

In a previous paper, we investigate the control problem of discrete event systems under cyber attacks, where CA-controllability and CA-observability are proposed. We prove that a discrete event system can be controlled to generate a specification language K if and only if K is CA-controllable and CA-observable. While CA controllability can be “converted” to (conventional) controllability, CA-observability cannot be “converted” to (conventional) observability. In this paper, we further investigate CA-observability. We develop a method and an algorithm to check CA-observability. The method involves constructing an augmented automaton whose states are pairs of the current state and state estimate of the supervised system. We prove that K is CA-observable if and only if the language generated by the augmented automaton is equal to K. An algorithm is then developed to check CA-observability. We also investigate the properties of CA-observability. We show that CA-observability is not closed under (set) in tersection. Note that (conventional) observability is closed under intersection. We further show that CA-observability is not closed under union. This is similar to observability. If K is not CA-controllable and CA-observable, we pro pose a method to calculate a CA-controllable and CA observable sublanguage. We first calculate the supremal CA-controllable sublanguage for K which can be described by a sub-automaton of the automaton for K. We then propose a state-estimate-based supervisor based on the subautomaton, which ensures the supervised system stays within K.