ADAPTATION OF ZERO TRUST ARCHITECTURE FOR CYBER-PHYSICAL ROBOTIC SYSTEMS: BASIC REQUIREMENTS AND WIRELESS CHANNEL RESILIENCE LIMITS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2663-4023.2026.34.1359Keywords:
Zero Trust, cybersecurity, cyber-physical system, robotic system, ns-3, resilience, wireless communication, continuous verification, authorization, security policyAbstract
The problem of applying the Zero Trust approach to the security of Cyber-Physical Robotic Systems is analyzed. It is substantiated that the close interaction of network computing, sensors, actuators and physical control systems forms a single risk plane, where the compromise of identification data, telemetry or communication channels threatens both information leakage and dangerous physical incidents. The research area covers industrial and mobile robots, unmanned aerial vehicles, service and collaborative robots, the functioning of which depends on cyber components capable of influencing physical behavior. Within the framework of the architecture development, five basic Zero Trust requirements were formulated: verifiable identification, contextual authorization, network segmentation, assessment of telemetry relevance and reliability, as well as adaptive response with limited operation and local fault tolerance. To determine the limits of the stability of the wireless control channel, simulation modeling was performed in the ns-3 environment (IEEE 802.11ax WiFi 6 standard, one access point, 20 client stations). Based on the analysis of 140 routes (distances 30–125 m, total load 100 Mbps), the aggregate useful throughput (aggregate goodput), p95 delay, and packet loss percentage were estimated. A two-stage nature of the communication channel degradation was revealed: the early time degradation limit was recorded at a distance of 40 m (p95 delay jump to 351.8 ms with almost no loss), and the limit of stable loss degradation was recorded at 50 m (losses of 9.61%). At a critical distance of 125 m, goodput decreases to 0.387 Mbps with losses of 99.81%. It was established that the obtained wireless communication stability limits are decisive for telemetry delivery and response mode selection, but in isolation do not guarantee the implementation of Zero Trust. For comprehensive validation of the zero-trust architecture, a pipeline for synchronized analysis of network metrics, security events, and the physical state of the robot is proposed.
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