Guidance Laws for Engagement Time Control

Autonomous aerial vehicles like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted various military and civilian applications. The primary guidance objective of any autonomous vehicle is to reach the desired destination point (target or waypoint). However, many practical engagements impose additional constraints like minimum control effort, a desired final velocity direction or a predefined engagement time. This thesis addresses engagement time constrained guidance problems pertaining to missiles and UAVs. The first part of the thesis discusses a nonlinear guidance law for impact time control of missiles against stationary target. The guidance law is designed with a particular choice of missile heading error variation as a function of ran to-target. The proposed heading error variation leads to an exact closed-form expression for the impact time. controlling the impact time, a closed-form relation is derived relating the control parameter to the desired impact time. A new Lyapunov based guidance law with a monotonically decreasing lateral acceleration is proposed in the next part of the thesis. An exact expression for impact time with minimum and maximum achievable impact times is derived. A control parameter is proposed with a closed-form relationship to the desired impact time. Using the concept of predicted interception point, the two guidance laws are extended for impact time control against non-maneuvering and moving targets. The proposed guidance models are extended to three-dimensional engagements by deducing yaw and pitch lateral accelerations satisfying the desired heading error profile. Extensive simulation studies are carried out for single missile and salvo attack scenarios. The last part of the thesis presents a guidance methodology governing the arrival time of a UAV at a waypoint. A specific arrival angle is considered as an additional constraint. The arrival constraints are satisfied by varying the navigation gain of the proportional navigation guidance law. The methodology is applied for simultaneous and sequential arrival of UAVs at a waypoint