Guidance law for mimicking short-range ballistic trajectories

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of mimicking short-range ballistic trajectories and presents a feedback guidance law addressing that. Analysis of the ideal ballistic trajectory is carried out and closed-form expressions are derived for the heading error and its derivative. Satisfying the launch angle, the impact angle, and the initial heading error rate of the ballistic trajectory, a guidance law is proposed using bearings-only information of the impact point. Analysis of the proposed guidance law is carried out evaluating the variation in guidance gains, the maximum look-angle, and the capturability. Analyzing the time-varying effective navigation gain, boundedness of the lateral acceleration is also ascertained. Simulations are carried out mimicking the ideal and realistic ballistic trajectories. Robustness of the proposed guidance method is verified against wind disturbances and error in modeling drag coefficient.