A Novel Guidance Law for Intercepting a Highly Maneuvering Target

Given the resolution of the guidance for intercepting highly maneuvering targets, a novel finite-time convergent guidance law is proposed, which takes the following conditions into consideration, including the impact angle constraint, the guidance command input saturation constraint, and the autopilot second-order dynamic characteristics. Firstly, based on the nonsingular terminal sliding mode control theory, a finite-time convergent nonsingular terminal sliding mode surface is designed. On the back of the backstepping control method, the virtual control law appears. A nonlinear first-order filter is constructed so as to address the “differential expansion” problem in traditional backstepping control. By designing an adaptive auxiliary system, the guidance command input saturation problem is dealt with. The RBF neural network disturbance observer is used for estimating the unknown boundary external disturbances of the guidance system caused by the target acceleration. The parameters of the RBF neural network are adjusted online in real time, for the purpose of improving the estimation accuracy of the RBF neural network disturbance observer and accelerating its convergence characteristics. At the same time, an adaptive law is designed to compensate the estimation error of the RBF neural network disturbance observer. Then, the Lyapunov stability theory is used to prove the finite-time stability of the guidance law. Finally, numerical simulations verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed guidance law.