Bianca Mazzà

Camilla Fioravanti, Bianca Mazza, Marta Menci et al.

Submarine power and telecommunication cables constitute critical global infrastructure, yet they remain vulnerable to mechanical damage caused by maritime activities and intentional tampering. Continuous monitoring of these assets is therefore essential for early detection of anomalous events. This paper proposes a model-based framework for real-time anomaly detection in submarine cables using spatially distributed deformation measurements along the cable. The cable is modeled as a tensioned structure governed by a damped wave equation with fixed boundary conditions. A finite-dimensional state-space representation is obtained through spatial discretization, enabling the use of a Kalman filter to estimate the cable's dynamic state under stochastic environmental disturbances. Anomaly detection is then formulated as a statistical hypothesis test applied to the innovation sequence of the filter. Compared with purely data-driven alarms, the proposed framework provides an interpretable residual signal whose threshold can be related to a prescribed false-alarm probability. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed framework can reliably identify localized disturbances while remaining robust to ambient environmental excitation.

Gabriele Oliva, Bianca Mazzà, Roberto Setola

Modern maritime navigation and control systems rely on digital sensing, estimation, and communication pipelines that fuse GNSS, radar, inertial, and AIS data through approaches such as Kalman-filter-based estimators. While these technologies are essential for safety and efficiency, their growing interconnection also exposes vessels to faults and cyber-physical anomalies. This paper introduces a Statistical Detection Suite (SDS) to detect malicious stealthy disturbances. Specifically, the SDS operates directly on the innovations of Kalman filters, providing a lightweight yet statistically grounded layer of anomaly monitoring within maritime estimation frameworks. The SDS jointly evaluates whitened innovations through four complementary checks: (i) bias, (ii) covariance consistency via the normalized innovation squared (NIS), (iii) Gaussianity, and (iv) temporal independence via portmanteau statistics. The analysis further examines how an adversary can craft stealthy finite-impulse-response (FIR) Gaussian disturbances that can evade classical chi-square checks, formulating an optimization-based design that balances stealth and trajectory impact. An evaluation in maritime navigation scenarios illustrates how the SDS exposes colored spoofing attacks that bypass traditional methods, highlighting the role of innovation-based monitoring in strengthening maritime resilience against cyber-physical threats.