MISSILE GUIDANCE LAWS

NITHIN KUMAR. V. P, 4NI13ME081, 7th SEMESTER B SECTION

1. INTRODUCTION
A missile is a self-propelled precision-guided munition system, as opposed to an unguided selfpropelled munition, referred to as a rocket. Missiles come in types adapted for different purposes:
Surface-to-Surface/Air-to-Surface, Surface-to-Air, Air-to-Air and Anti-satellite. Any type of Missile has
the following four system components.
1. Missile guidance and/or targeting system: Missiles may be targeted by different ways. The
most common method is to use some form of radiation, such as infrared, lasers or radio
waves, to guide the missile onto its target. This radiation may emanate from the target (such
as the heat of an engine or the radio waves from an enemy radar), or it may be provided by
the missile itself (such as a radar). Another method is to use a TV guidanceusing
either visible light or infrared to see the target. The picture may be used either by a human
operator who steers the missile onto its target or by a computer doing much the same job.
2. Flight system: Whether a guided missile uses a targeting system, a guidance system or both,
it needs a flight system. The flight system uses the data from the targeting or guidance system
to maneuver the missile in flight, allowing it to counter inaccuracies in the missile or to follow
a moving target. There are two main systems: vectored thrust (for missiles that are powered
throughout the guidance phase of their flight) and aerodynamic maneuvering (wings,
fins, canard (aeronautics), etc.).
Engine: Missiles are powered by an engine, generally either a type of rocket engine or jet
engine. Rockets are generally of the solid fuel type for ease of maintenance and fast
deployment, although some larger ballistic missiles use Liquid-propellant rockets. Jet engines
are generally used in cruise missiles, most commonly of the turbojet type, due to its relative
simplicity and low frontal area. Missiles often have multiple engine stages, particularly in those
launched from the surface. These stages may all be of similar types or may include a mix of
engine types for example, surface-launched cruise missiles often have a rocket booster for
launching and a jet engine for sustained flight.
Warhead: Missiles generally have one or more explosive warheads, although other weapon
types may also be used. The warheads of a missile provide its primary destructive power
(many missiles have extensive secondary destructive power due to the high kinetic energy of
the weapon and unburnt fuel that may be on board). Warheads are most commonly of the high
explosive type, often employing shaped charges to exploit the accuracy of a guided weapon
to
destroy
hardened
targets.
Other
warhead
types
include submunitions, incendiaries, nuclear weapons, chemical, biological or radiological weapons.
Warheadless missiles are often used for testing and training purposes.

This term paper focuses on missile guidance laws. Before studying missile guidance laws, it is
important to know different missile guidance systems. Below are the basic guidance systems,
Line of sight:

This is a very simple control system and relies on the use of a base station that is constantly
tracking the target. In Line of sight guidance, there is a reference point (in this case depicted by a
ground radar station, but it could be a moving platform). A beam pointing at the target Radiates out
from this reference point. In LOS guidance, control signals are sent to the missile to keep it on this
beam. If the missile stays on the beam pointed at the target, and has sufficient fuel and a fast enough
relative speed, it will attain the target. Course deviations are given to the missile in the form of lateral
acceleration requests (steering commands), to attempt to keep the perpendicular distance from the
beam to zero. There are two sub-classes of LOS, and these are CLOS (Command Line of Sight)
and BR (Beam Rider).
Pure pursuit:

Pure Pursuit reduces the number of involved actors from three (reference point, missile, target)
to just two (missile, target). In Pure Pursuit, the missile autonomously tracks the target and chases it
directly, attempting to point at it the entire time. There are two variants of this control law, one is
Altitude Pursuit, and the other is Velocity Pursuit.

In Altitude Pursuit, it is the axis of the missile that is kept pointing at the target. In Velocity Pursuit, the
missile's velocity vector is aimed at the target. These two are typically different vectors because the angle
of attack of the missile is not aligned with the axis of the missile as it flies and skids across the sky. (It is
Velocity Pursuit that appears to perform better than altitude pursuit).
Proportional navigation:

Proportional Navigation(PN) law uses the idea that if the Line of sight(LOS) rate at any time is nonzero then the guidance command applied should be such that it annuls the LOS rate. In fact, the lateral
acceleration generated is made proportional to the LOS rate and the closing velocity.
A PN guidance system has many advantages. If the target makes evasive maneuvers, a PN missile
can take corrective action by turning to keep the bearing angle constant; when this happens, the angular
acceleration required by the missile is less because of its distance away from the target.
A PN law can almost be thought of as a 'far sighted' algorithm as it attempts to take corrective action
right from launch. If fired at a non-maneuvering target, then pretty much as soon as launched, it is quickly
set up for a hit solution and no other guidance adjustments are needed for the rest of the flight (save for
some minor tweaks), this improves reliability and hit success. As we saw above, the less sophisticated
guidance laws require the highest acceleration maneuvers right before impact.

2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
The missile guidance is a well-known nonlinear control engineering area of research. As is well
known, the accurate guidance of a missile is a highly concerned problem. Over these decades,
persistent efforts have been made to meet the increasing need for the accuracy of missile guidance.
Many technologies have been developed to improve guidance performance, accuracy and to
overcome environmental disturbances. Various guidance laws have been exploited with different
design concepts over the year. Different guidance laws are being used in modern missile guidance
systems. The objective of this research is to study the various guidance laws.

3. LITERATURE SURVEY
I.

Missile Guidance via Bearing Control, Y. Ochi National Defense Academy, 1-10-20
Hashirimizu, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 239-8686, Japan.

This paper proposes a missile guidance law via bearing angle control based on two-degree-offreedom control. More specifically, the bearing angle of the missile velocity is controlled by the
acceleration command to track a command signal given by a command generator. Computer
simulation of two-dimensional engagement is conducted to investigate guidance performance

Figure 1 shows a two-dimensional missile-target engagement geometry. The X- and Y-axes

define an Earth-fixed or inertial coordinate system. The imaginary line from the missile to the target
is the line of sight(LOS). The angle between the LOS and the X-axis is the LOS angle . VM and VT
denote the missile and target velocities, respectively, and T the target acceleration. yM and yT are
bearing angles of the velocity vectors of the missile and target, respectively. RTM is the distance
between the missile and the target. As Fig.1 shows, when the component of the missile velocity vector
perpendicular to the LOS is equal to that of the target velocity vector, the collision triangle is formed:
that is, if the missile and the target do not maneuver and keep their velocities, they collide at the
vertex of the triangle.

Figure 2 shows a block diagram of the proposed guidance system, which is composed of
feedback and feedforward controllers and a command generator. Depending on the signals from
other blocks (Seeker dynamics, Kinematics & geometry), the command generator provides with a
desired bearing angle yM that forms a collision triangle. The proposed guidance law has better
performance than Proportional Navigation Guidance in smaller miss distance and longer initial
range for which intercept is possible.
II.

Adaptive Dynamic Surface Control for Integrated Missile Guidance and Autopilot in the
Presence of Input Saturation, Xiaoling Liang1, Mingzhe Hou2 and Guangren Duan3.

In this paper, adaptive dynamic surface control has been investigated for the integrated missile
guidance and autopilot with input constraints. This paper considers integrated guidance and control
system with input saturation for homing missiles based on the three channels independent design
idea. An auxiliary system is first introduced into the integrated guidance and control model for the
pitch channel. Then, a smooth function and a Nussbaum type function are employed in the dynamic
surface control design to deal with the problem of input saturation constraint.
The proposed control scheme guarantees the desired interception performance and the stability
of the missile dynamics. The similar control scheme is further applied to the yaw channel and roll
channel respectively. Nonlinear 6-DOF simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effect of the
approach.
III.

Design of three-dimensional missile guidance law via tunable nonlinear H control with
saturation constraint, C. S. Shieh.

The author proposes a three-dimensional missile guidance law with saturating actuator for the
pursuit of an unpredictably maneuvering target. In the proposed guidance scheme, the nonlinear part
of the relative motion equations between the missile and target is first cancelled. Then, a tunable
state feedback guidance law is designed to eliminate the effect of external disturbance. The proposed
guidance law can achieve reduced interception time than others, yet it is considerably simpler.

Fig. 3: Trajectories of relative distance between missile and target for FHG and APNG against
sinusoidal target with different initial conditions
The author has also illustrated an example to demonstrate the interception time required by the
proposed robust guidance law. It is evident that the proposed robust guidance law takes lesser time
to intercept the target when compared to APN Guidance law.
IV.

Differential Games Missile Guidance with Bearings-Only Measurements, SIMONE

BATTISTINI, Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil; TAL SHIMA Technion, Israel.

This paper presented a new approach to missile guidance driven by bearings-only

measurements. A major problem with this kind of application is range unobservability. The new
approach embeds the analysis of the error covariance matrix from the homing loop integrated Kalman
filter into a pursuitevasion differential game. The information from the filter is used to determine, at
each time step, which missile maneuver improves range observability the most. Within a pursuit
evasion game, the state space is divided to capture and avoidance zones. In the capture zone,
maneuvering does not affect the miss distance of the engagement, but it can improve the observability
of the range. A new guidance strategy that makes the missile maneuver improve observability in the
capture zones was defined. The new guidance strategy was compared to the one resulting from the
optimal solution of the deterministic pursuitevasion differential game and to PN (Proportional
Navigation). The results showed that the new approach enhances the engagements variables
estimation in both scenarios.
In conclusion, the use of the pursuitevasion game framework has allowed the reformulation of
the initial problem: instead of looking for the optimal maneuver that enhances observability, a
suboptimal guidance strategy was found, which defines a maximum allowable distance from the
collision triangle. The approach of choosing the best trajectory according to the information from the
error covariance matrix of the Kalman filter is applicable to other cases. It is based on a numerical
analysis and does not depend on the guidance law or on the available measurements.

V.

Missile guidance law with impact angle constraint and acceleration saturation, Yiyin Wei1,
Wangkui Liu2, Guangren Duan2. 1)China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation,
Beijing. 2)Center for Control Theory and Guidance Technology, Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin.
In this paper a nonlinear adaptive guidance law is proposed for missile to intercept large
maneuvering target with impact angle constraint and acceleration saturation, based on backstepping
control method. In the presence of acceleration saturation, the guidance law insures that the line-ofsight (LOS) angle converges to the desired angle and LOS angular rate asymptotical converges to
zero. To deal with the acceleration of target which is seen as disturbance of the guidance system and
improve the performance of the guidance system, an adaptive control technique is adopted to
estimate the upper bound of the disturbance. To handle acceleration saturation of missile, an auxiliary
system is constructed whose state is used for guidance law design and stability analysis. Moreover,
based on Lyapunov stability theory, a detailed stability analysis of the resulting guidance system is
carried out. Finally, the researcher performs simulations to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed
guidance law. Results of simulation are shown in Figs. 4 and 5.

Figure 4: Interception Geometry

Figure 5: Miss Distance

As shown in Figs. 4 and 5, the proposed guidance law can make the miss distance of the guidance
system less than 0.1m at end of guidance process which means that the missile can intercept the large
maneuvering target by hit-to- kill. However, the PN guidance law make the missile to have a lager miss
distance (more than 300 m), which means the intercept mission of the missile is failed. Based on the
above simulation results, it is clear that the proposed guidance law can make the missile intercept the
large maneuvering target in desired impact angle with acceleration saturation.
VI.

Optimal guidance law for cooperative attack of multiple missiles based on optimal control
theory, By Xiao Sun and Yuanqing Xia, School of Automation, Key Laboratory of Intelligent
Control and Decision of Complex Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing

Research Papers to deal with guidance laws for a single missile attacking a single target. But
when multiple missiles attack a single target, a separate guidance law is to be used. In this paper, the
problem of optimal guidance laws for the situation of many-to-one guidance based on the optimal control
theory has been investigated. New guidance laws for the many-to-one are obtained combined with 2-D
optimal guidance law.
Simulation results have shown the validity of the new many-to-one guidance law.

Fig.6: Guidance track when target is

stationary

Fig.7: Guidance track when target evade

horizontally

Fig.8: Guidance track when target evade

vertically

Fig.9: An example of non-simultaneous

guidance.

Following observations are made from the simulation results:

When many-to-one guidance law is used, missiles hit the target successfully, irrespective
of whether the target is stationary or evading.
Without many-to-one guidance law, simultaneous attack will be impossible.

3.1 Summary Sheet:

Sl

Author and year

Title

Name

No.
1

of

Comments

Journal
Y. Ochi, 2003

Missile guidance via

IEEE journal

bearing control.

Proposed law
is better than
Proportional
Navigation
Guidance law.

Xiaoling Liang,

Adaptive Dynamic Surface

ASCE journal

Proposed

Mingzhe Hou and

Control for Integrated

Guidance law

Guangren Duan,

Missile Guidance and

improves

2014

Autopilot in the Presence

performance.

of Input Saturation.
3

C. S. Shieh,
2007

Design of three-

IEEE journal

Proposed

dimensional missile

guidance law is

guidance law via tunable

superior to APNG

nonlinear H control with

law.

saturation constraint.

Battistini. S and
Shima. T, 2014

Yiyin Wei,

Differential Games

IEEE journal

new proposed

Missile Guidance with

strategy improves

Bearings-Only

observability of

Measurements

missile.

Missile guidance law with

IEEE journal

Proposed

Wangkui Liu,

impact angle constraint

guidance law is

Guangren Duan,

and acceleration

better than

2016

saturation.

Proportional

Navigation
Guidance law.
6

Xiao Sun and

Yuanqing Xia,
2012

Optimal guidance law for

cooperative attack of

International

Many-to-one

journal of control

guidance law is

multiple missiles based on

suited for multiple

optimal control theory.

missile attack.

4. METHODOLOGY
Selection of research topic.
Collecting related journals.
Formulation of research objective
Literature survey
Conclusion

5. CONCLUSIONS
From this research, we can come to following conclusions:
Though Proportional navigation guidance control is the basic type of control, the modern
guidance laws perform better than the former.
The Adaptive Dynamic Surface Control for Integrated Missile Guidance guarantees the
desired interception performance and the stability of the missile dynamics.
Differential games missile guidance improves observability.
Multiple missile attack will be successful with the use of many-to-one guidance law.

6.

REFERENCES
Missile Guidance via Bearing Control, Y. Ochi National Defense Academy, 1-10-20
Hashirimizu, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 239-8686, Japan.
Adaptive Dynamic Surface Control for Integrated Missile Guidance and Autopilot in the
Presence of Input Saturation, Xiaoling Liang, Mingzhe Hou and Guangren Duan.
Design of three-dimensional missile guidance law via tunable nonlinear H control with
saturation constraint, C. S. Shieh.
Differential Games Missile Guidance with Bearings-Only Measurements, SIMONE
BATTISTINI, Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil; TAL SHIMA Technion, Israel.
Missile guidance law with impact angle constraint and acceleration saturation, Yiyin Wei1,
Wangkui Liu2, Guangren Duan2. 1)China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation,
Beijing. 2)Center for Control Theory and Guidance Technology, Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin.
Optimal guidance law for cooperative attack of multiple missiles based on optimal control
theory, By Xiao Sun and Yuanqing Xia, School of Automation, Key Laboratory of Intelligent
Control and Decision of Complex Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing.
http://datagenetics.com/blog/august22014/index.html.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile.