Impact angle control guidance laws for cooperative attack of multiple missiles with communication

Abstract

This thesis presents impact control guidance laws for cooperative attack of multiple missiles with communication. The cooperative guidance strategy is firstly studied as a centralized control problem where the multiple missiles are fully connected with communication network. The general solutions for two player problem are obtained for both Linear Quadratic Regulation problem and Tracking problem. For regulation problem a coupled constraint on terminal velocity of two missiles are incorporated so that their vertical components sum to zero at the terminal time for maximum survivability. And for tracking problem the velocity constraint is modified to track a desired impact angle at the terminal time. The general solution for two player problem is extended for n-missiles system via hamiltonian approach to get the general solution. Secondly, for realistic consideration a decentralized control problem is studied. The decentralized control problem includes an information structural constraint which the is generally hard to solve. In this thesis the states are separated to accessible information part to the player who has less information and the remainders. Then it is shown that the decentralized control problem can be separated to two centralized control sub-problems. Therefore the optimal solution can be expressed in terms of two Riccati equations. The optimal strategy is that the player who has less information has the authority of the overall control strategy under its estimation value, and the player who has full information has an ability to support the other player’s decision by minimizing the difference of estimation error. The decentralized strategy is applied to two missiles cooperative attack where their communication network is limited to one-way.