Zero-sum versus nonzero-sum differential game approach to missile guidance

New developments and improvements on evasive missiles have led to a situation in which the current missile guidance laws have difficulties to intercept maneuvering targets. The nature of the interception problem with 2 non-cooperative players leads to the field of differential games. Recent studies have focused on the so-called zero-sum Nash equilibrium solutions. In this paper another game-theoretic equilibrium, namely the nonzero-sum Nash equilibrium, is studied. The tuning of both methods is performed by solving a constrained nonlinear optimization problem. The weighting parameters of the performance index are optimized, such that the miss distance is minimized while conjugate points regions are avoided and hard constraints on the controls are respected. A comparison of the performance of both derived guidance laws shows that the zero-sum Nash based guidance law outperforms the nonzero-sum Nash guidance laws