Adaptive Event-Triggered Security Control for Nonlinear CPSs Under Coexisting FDI Attacks and Actuator Faults

This study addresses an integrated security control and communication co-design problem for nonlinear CPSs subject to coexisting FDI attacks and actuator faults. A novel adaptive discrete event-triggered communication scheme (ADETCS) is proposed. Its triggering threshold adapts to the system state. State estimation, fault estimation, and attack detection are all migrated to the control unit. Based on this framework, a closed-loop T–S fuzzy model is established for active defense against actuator faults and dual-end FDI attacks. A robust augmented observer is then developed via Lyapunov stability theory to jointly estimate system states, actuator faults, and FDI attacks. Sufficient conditions are further derived for an integrated security controller that unifies attack tolerance and fault tolerance. Simulation results on a quadruple-tank system show that the proposed method effectively counteracts coexisting attacks and faults while significantly reducing resource consumption. Over an 800-s horizon, data transmissions drop to 712 (8.9% transmission rate). The sensor-node computational load is also reduced from 8000 time-triggered executions to 712 event-triggered ones.