Attack-resilient distributed cooperative control of virtually coupled high-speed trains via topology reconfiguration

This letter addresses the resilient distributed cooperative control problem of a virtually coupled train convoy under stochastic disturbances and cyber attacks. The main purpose is to achieve distributed coordination of virtually coupled high-speed trains with the prescribed inter-train distance and same cruise velocity, while preserving driving security of the train convoy against a class of topological attacks. First, a resilient distributed cooperative control framework of the virtually coupled train convoy is established, which incorporates the longitudinal train dynamics, stochastic disturbances, and topological attacks on inter-train information flows. Building on that, a distributed cooperative control protocol and a topology reconfiguration algorithm are designed for attack-resilient train convoy tracking. Furthermore, a formal stability analysis is performed for the exponential convergence of the convoy tracking errors. Finally, a numerical case study on a 56 km-line segment of a real-world high-speed railway is carried out to validate the efficacy of our results.