Impact-Angle and Terminal-Maneuvering-Acceleration Constrained Guidance against Maneuvering Target

Abstract

A new, highly constrained guidance law is proposed against a maneuvering target while satisfying both impact angle and terminal acceleration constraints. Here, the impact angle constraint is addressed by solving an optimal guidance problem in which the target’s maneuvering acceleration is time-varying. To deal with the terminal acceleration constraint, the closed-form solutions of the new guidance are needed. Thus, a novel engagement system based on the guidance considering the target maneuvers is put forward by choosing two angles associated with the relative velocity vector and line of sight (LOS) as the state variables, and then the system is linearized using small angle assumptions, which yields a special linear time-varying (LTV) system that can be solved analytically by the spectral-decomposition-based method. For the general case where the closing speed, which is the speed of approach of the missile and target, is allowed to change with time arbitrarily, the solutions obtained are semi-analytical. In particular, when the closing speed changes linearly with time, the completely closed-form solutions are derived successfully. By analyzing the generalized solutions, the stability domain of the guidance coefficients is obtained, in which the maneuvering acceleration of the missile can converge to zero finally. Here, the key to investigating the stability domain is to find the limits of some complicated integral terms of the generalized solutions by skillfully using the squeeze theorem. The advantages of the proposed guidance are demonstrated by conducting trajectory simulations.