Impact time and angle guidance considering aerodynamic drag

Abstract

This paper presents a new guidance law for homing missiles to achieve the impact time and angle control against a stationary target in the presence of aerodynamic drag. As a first step, an impact angle guidance law is developed based on the framework of conventional proportional navigation guidance. The novelty of the proposed impact angle guidance law is that its trajectory shape and length are independent of the missile speed variation, which can facilitate the impact time control significantly. Then, the speed profile and exact time -to -go prediction of the missile are obtained without involving complicated numerical computations. Finally, a feedback biased term is integrated into the proposed impact angle guidance law to realize the impact time control. Unlike most similar studies, the guidance law in this paper can achieve the desired impact time and angle under the condition that the missile speed is changing subject to aerodynamic drag. Extensive numerical simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness and computational simplicity of the proposed guidance law.