Error Separation Techniques Based on Telemetry and Tracking Data for Ballistic Missile

Abstract

An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a long range (some greater than 10000 km) and great firepower typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery, such as PeaceKeeper (PK) missile (Shattuck, 1992), Minutesman missile (Tony C. L., 2003). Due to the long-distance flight, the requirement for navigation system is rigorous and only gimbaled inertial navigation system (INS) is presently competent, such as the advanced inertial reference sphere (AIRS) used in the PK missile (John L., 1979), yet the strapdown inertial navigation system is generally not used on the intercontinental ballistic missile because of the poor accuracy (Titterton & Weston, 1997). The gimbaled inertial navigation system typically contains three single-degree-of-freedom rate integrating gyros, three mutually perpendicular single-axis accelerometers, a loop system and other auxiliary system, providing an orientation of the inertial navigation platform relative to inertial space. Due to system design and production technology there exist a lot of errors referred as guidance instrumentation systematic errors (IEEE Standards Committee, 1971; IEEE Standards Board, 1973), which have an important effect on impact accuracy of ballistic missile. Before the flight of ballistic missile, the guidance instrumentation systematic errors are need to calibrate, and then the calibration results are used to compensate the instrumental errors, which has been discussed in depth by Thompson (Thompson, 2000), Eduardo and Hugh (Eduardo & Hugh, 1999), Jackson (Jackson, 1973), Coulter and Meehan (Coulter & Meehan , 1981). Some content discussed has been issued as IEEE standard (IEEE Standards Committee, 1971; IEEE Standards Board, 1973). However, the guidance instrumentation systematic errors cannot be completely compensated by using the calibration results. Therefore, flight test of ballistic missile is usually performed to qualify the performance. Because of different objectives of test or some other reasons specific testing trajectory is sometimes adopted, and herein the flight test cannot reflect the actual situation of ballistic missile in the whole trajectory. Consequently, it is necessary to analyze the landing errors resulted from guidance instrumentation systematic errors in the specific trajectory and convert them into those landing errors in the case of the whole trajectory. In fact, there are many factors affecting the impact accuracy of ballistic missile, such as gravity anomaly, upper atmosphere, electromagnetic force, etc. Forsberg and Sideris has