Accurate Time-to-Go Estimation for Proportional Navigation Guidance

Abstract

P ROPORTIONAL navigation (PN) is a popular guidance law because of its robustness, simplicity, and ease of implementation. PN guidance law is capable of intercepting both nonmaneuvering and maneuvering targets [1]. PN is also an optimal control effort guidance law in the linearized setting [2]. Modern tactical guidance laws are designed not only to intercept a target but to satisfy other constraints [3] like impact time, impact angle, and other optimality constraints. These guidance laws can often be represented as being comprising of a PN component and other components designed to satisfy other constraints. As these guidance laws require an estimate of the time-to-go, it is important to develop methods to obtain an accurate estimate of the time-to-go for the PNguidance law. An interesting application requiring the estimation of time-to-go is in salvo attack problems [4], in which several missiles, launched at different times, need to achieve interception of the target simultaneously. Using PN guidance law to achieve this task requires an accurate estimation of time-to-go. Impact time, impact angle, and other optimal guidance laws also need information of the time-to-go to compute the guidance command. One of the simplest ways to estimate time-to-go is by computing range over closing velocity (or the negative of the range rate). The range over range rate estimate is accurate only when the closing velocity is constant and the initial heading error is small. Improved methods for time-to-go estimation by solving a linear quadratic control problem is discussed in York and Pastrick [5]. In Tahk et al. [6], a recursive time-to-go method is discussed in which the timeto-go estimates are updated recursively. The time-to-go estimate is updated in every guidance cycle time and a compensationmethod for the time-to-go error is obtained. The time-to-go estimate improves as the engagement proceeds because the guidance law used reduces the heading error. In Sang et al. [7] the commanded guidance history is considered to obtain the time-to-go estimate. The time-to-go estimate in Jeon et al. [4] is obtained as a function of the initial range and heading error. Our time-to-go estimation method also depends on the initial conditions and hence, our results are compared with Jeon et al. [4]. In this Note, an accurate method to obtain a time-to-go estimate of PN guidance law for a stationary target is proposed. The time-to-go for a stationary target is obtained accurately by a simple interpolation. It is shown that from the time-to-go estimate of a particular initial condition, the time-to-go estimate of any other initial condition can be obtained by a simple but elegant time scaling property of the PN guidance law. The time-to-go estimate as a function of the heading error for the particular initial condition is used as the base solution for estimating the time-to-go for other initial conditions. This method also gives estimates for initial conditions with large initial heading errors; even for cases when the missile is launched with a high heading error. Themethod can be used to obtain time-to-go estimates for any initial condition and navigation gain. The time-to-go estimation is extended to constant velocity targets by a simple iterative process. The time-to-go obtained after the initial iteration is exact and need not be computed in every guidance cycle time.