Statistical performance evaluation between linear and nonlinear designs for aircraft relative guidance

International audienceOver the last few years, several concepts concerning the delegation to the flight crew of some tasks currently performed by the air traffic controllers have emerged. Among these new ideas, relative guidance has appeared to be capable to contribute to the enhancement of air traffic capacity though it raises difficult technical challenges. Indeed, this kind of maneuver appears difficult to perform manually, and may induce an excessive increase in flight crew workload, thus requiring new on-board automated functions. Some linear and nonlinear techniques have already been applied to design a feedback loop which performs automatically merging maneuvers and maintains station keeping behind a designated aircraft. The main contributions of the paper consist in a new nonlinear design of the feedback control loop and in the comparison between a linear design and the proposed nonlinear design, namely a proportional/derivative design and the proposed backstepping design. The comparison is based on Monte Carlo simulations, and promotes the nonlinear design. Indeed, a touch of complexity in the design process allows for better performances: backstepping fosters quick achievement of merging and station keeping maneuvers