Secure Combination of Untrusted Time Information Based on Optimized Dempster–Shafer Theory

作者：Yang Li, Yujie Luo, Lujun Fang, Yichen Zhang, Wei Huang, Ao Sun, Shuai Zhang, Tao Zhang, Chuang Zhou, Li Ma, Jie Yang, Heng Wang, Yan Pan, Yun Shao, Xing Chen, Ziyang Chen, Song Yu, Bin Luo, Hong Guo, Bingjie Xu · 发表于：IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1109/tim.2025.3565381 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption、Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques、Digital Media Forensic Detection

Secure precision time synchronization is important for applications of Cyber-Physical Systems. However, several attacks, especially the Time Delay Attack (TDA), deteriorate the performance of time synchronization system seriously. Multiple paths scheme is thought as an effective security countermeasure to decrease the influence of TDA. However, the effective secure combination algorithm is still missed for precision time synchronization. In this paper, a secure combination algorithm based on Dempster-Shafer theory is proposed for multiple paths method. Special optimizations are done for the combination algorithm to solve the potential problems due to untrusted evidence. Theoretical simulation shows that the proposed algorithm works much better than Fault Tolerant Algorithm (FTA) and the attack detection method based on single path. And experimental demonstration proves the feasibility and superiority of the proposed algorithm, where the time stability with 27.97 ps, 1.57 ps, and 1.12 ps at average time 1s, 10s, 100s is achieved under TDAs and local clock jumps. The proposed algorithm can be used to improve the security and resilience of many importance synchronization protocol, such as NTP, PTP, and TWFTT.