Software-Defined Cyber–Energy Secure Underwater Wireless Power Transfer

Abstract

Underwater wireless power transfer (UWPT) is a critical infrastructure for supplying power to underwater devices, such as underwater sensors and autonomous underwater vehicles. Enabling a software-defined architecture for UWPT promises to build a flexible and programmable underwater energy network. Although it is crucial that UWPT be made more resilient to cyberattacks and energy stealing, this remains an open challenge. In this article, we propose a software-defined UWPT (SD-UWPT) system that is both cyber and energy secure. A moving target defense approach and an active synchronous detection method are developed to protect the SD-UWPT against scanning-based attacks and power bot attacks. To enable energy-secure UWPT, an impedance measurement based approach is further established to prevent energy stealing. Through comprehensive evaluations, we validate the benefits of SD-UWPT and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed cyber–energy secure strategies against various attacks.