Co-Design of Cryptographic Parameters and Delay-Aware Feedback Gain for Encrypted Control Systems
Pith reviewed 2026-05-10 11:14 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
A co-design of cryptographic parameters and delay-aware feedback gains can keep encrypted control systems stable.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
By expressing encryption-induced delay directly as a function of cryptographic parameters and deriving a finite collection of linear matrix inequalities that guarantee the existence of a stabilizing delay-dependent feedback gain, a tractable outer-inner design procedure can search over parameters satisfying a desired security level and recover a gain that renders the encrypted closed-loop system stable.
What carries the argument
The outer-inner search: an outer enumeration over cryptographic parameters that satisfy a security requirement, paired with an inner feasibility check of linear matrix inequalities obtained from delay-dependent stability analysis of the closed-loop system.
If this is right
- Encrypted control can be used at higher security levels without loss of stability by selecting a feedback gain matched to the resulting delay.
- The design task reduces to a sequence of standard LMI feasibility problems and is therefore computationally practical.
- Post-design encryption of a plaintext controller can be replaced by a joint search that avoids stability degradation.
- Networked control systems gain a systematic way to trade security strength against closed-loop stability margins.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- The same modeling of delay from security parameters could be reused for other privacy mechanisms such as secure multiparty computation in feedback loops.
- Hardware implementations could incorporate measured encryption latency rather than the analytic model to tighten the design.
- Adding network-induced delays to the same LMI framework would produce controllers robust to both encryption and communication effects.
- Performance objectives beyond stability, such as disturbance rejection, could be included by replacing the pure feasibility LMIs with optimization problems.
Load-bearing premise
The total delay caused by encryption can be modeled exactly as a deterministic value that depends only on the chosen cryptographic parameters, so that ordinary delay-dependent linear matrix inequality conditions remain valid for the encrypted implementation.
What would settle it
Apply the co-design procedure to a concrete linear plant for a chosen security level, obtain the cryptographic parameters and feedback gain, implement the encrypted controller with the modeled delay, and check whether the closed-loop state trajectories converge or stay bounded; divergence when the LMIs were feasible would contradict the claim.
read the original abstract
Encrypted control employs homomorphic encryption (HE) to protect both the computation and communication stages, making it a promising approach for secure networked control systems. Most existing results pre-design a controller in the plaintext domain and then implement it over encrypted data. However, this can be problematic because HE induces non-negligible communication and computation delays, which typically increase with the security level, potentially degrading control performance and even destabilizing the closed-loop system. To address this issue, we propose a co-design framework for cryptographic parameters and delay-aware feedback gain. We characterize the encryption-induced delay as a function of the cryptographic parameters and derive a sufficient condition for the existence of a stabilizing delay-aware feedback gain, expressed as a finite set of linear matrix inequalities. This leads to a tractable outer-inner design procedure that searches over cryptographic parameters that satisfy a desired security level and, for each such parameter, seeks a stabilizing feedback gain.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript proposes a co-design framework for cryptographic parameters and delay-aware feedback gains in homomorphic-encryption-based control systems. It characterizes the encryption-induced delay as a deterministic function of the cryptographic parameters, derives a sufficient condition for the existence of a stabilizing feedback gain in the form of a finite set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), and presents a tractable outer-inner design procedure that searches over admissible cryptographic parameters satisfying a target security level while solving for a stabilizing gain at each candidate.
Significance. If the delay model and LMI conditions are shown to be valid for the closed-loop encrypted system, the result would be significant for practical deployment of encrypted control: it directly addresses the stability degradation caused by HE-induced delays that increase with security level, moving beyond the common practice of designing controllers in plaintext and then encrypting them. The outer-inner procedure offers a computationally attractive way to jointly optimize security and performance.
major comments (2)
- [§3 (delay characterization)] The central claim rests on modeling the encryption-induced delay τ as a deterministic function solely of the cryptographic parameters (abstract and §3). This assumption is load-bearing for the outer-inner procedure; however, actual HE runtimes (multiplications, rotations, bootstrapping) depend on hardware, library optimizations, current noise level, and implementation details, introducing variability or state-dependence not captured by a static map. Without explicit bounds or experimental validation of this determinism, the LMI-derived gains may not stabilize the real system.
- [§4 (LMI derivation)] The LMI conditions (abstract and §4) are derived under the assumption of exact delayed dynamics ẋ(t) = Ax(t) + B K x(t-τ) with constant delay. The encrypted controller typically employs approximate arithmetic (e.g., CKKS) or quantization, so the effective input is a perturbed version of Kx(t-τ). The manuscript does not provide a robustness margin or perturbation analysis showing that the nominal LMIs remain sufficient; this undermines the stabilizing claim for realistic encrypted loops.
minor comments (2)
- [§2] Notation for the delay function τ(·) and the cryptographic parameter set should be introduced with a clear table or explicit mapping to standard HE parameters (modulus, dimension, security level) to improve readability.
- [§5] The numerical examples or validation section would benefit from reporting both the LMI feasibility and closed-loop simulation results under the actual HE implementation (not just the nominal delay model) to demonstrate practical utility.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for the constructive comments and for recognizing the potential significance of the co-design framework. We address each major comment below with targeted revisions to clarify assumptions and strengthen the results.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: [§3 (delay characterization)] The central claim rests on modeling the encryption-induced delay τ as a deterministic function solely of the cryptographic parameters (abstract and §3). This assumption is load-bearing for the outer-inner procedure; however, actual HE runtimes (multiplications, rotations, bootstrapping) depend on hardware, library optimizations, current noise level, and implementation details, introducing variability or state-dependence not captured by a static map. Without explicit bounds or experimental validation of this determinism, the LMI-derived gains may not stabilize the real system.
Authors: Section 3 derives τ deterministically from the number and type of homomorphic operations dictated by the cryptographic parameters, under the modeling assumption of constant per-operation execution times. This enables the outer-inner search procedure. We agree that real-world variability exists. In the revision we will add an explicit remark in §3 stating that the model provides a nominal delay and recommending the use of conservative upper bounds (e.g., measured worst-case times on target hardware) when applying the LMIs, thereby preserving the sufficient stability condition. revision: partial
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Referee: [§4 (LMI derivation)] The LMI conditions (abstract and §4) are derived under the assumption of exact delayed dynamics ẋ(t) = Ax(t) + B K x(t-τ) with constant delay. The encrypted controller typically employs approximate arithmetic (e.g., CKKS) or quantization, so the effective input is a perturbed version of Kx(t-τ). The manuscript does not provide a robustness margin or perturbation analysis showing that the nominal LMIs remain sufficient; this undermines the stabilizing claim for realistic encrypted loops.
Authors: The LMIs in §4 are obtained for the exact delayed closed-loop system, which is appropriate when the homomorphic scheme is configured for exact arithmetic (e.g., appropriate CKKS parameters or exact schemes such as BFV). We acknowledge that the manuscript does not yet address approximation errors. In the revision we will augment §4 with a perturbation analysis: if the effective input deviation satisfies a norm bound derived from the Lyapunov matrix and the LMI solution, asymptotic stability is retained via a standard Lyapunov perturbation argument. This will be stated as an additional sufficient condition. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No circularity detected in co-design derivation
full rationale
The derivation chain begins with an explicit characterization of encryption-induced delay as a deterministic function of cryptographic parameters (modulus, dimension, security level) drawn from standard homomorphic encryption models, followed by application of established delay-dependent LMI stability criteria for constant-delay LTI systems to obtain a sufficient condition for stabilizing gains. The outer-inner procedure is then a direct search over the resulting feasible set. No equation or claim reduces by construction to a fitted parameter, self-referential definition, or load-bearing self-citation; the LMI conditions and delay map are independent of the final co-design output and rest on external stability theory rather than tautology.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (2)
- domain assumption Encryption-induced delays can be expressed as a deterministic function of cryptographic parameters.
- standard math Delay-dependent stability of the closed-loop system can be certified by a finite set of linear matrix inequalities.
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