Development of a Novel Adaptive Control Algorithm for a Fighter Aircraft

Abstract

Simple Adaptive Control (SAC) is an output feedback direct model reference adaptive control technique that does not require full state feedback or observers. However, the design of the SAC controller involves trial and error selection of several weighting coefficients, which makes this adaptive controller difficult to synthesize. This paper presents the development of a novel SAC control law that overcomes this design complication by providing an easy synthesis procedure. With the novel SAC algorithm, only one coefficient is necessary, instead of nm + 2. Finally, the novel algorithm is applied to an illustrative fighter aircraft example and the performance of the new algorithm is compared to the original SAC algorithm through simulations.