Ballistic coefficient estimation for classification of missile

Abstract

The ballistic coefficient is a measure of projectile’s ability to overcome the air resistance. Since the motion equations of the missile are functions of the ballistic coefficient, many works of estimating the missile’s ballistic coefficient have been conducted for reasons such as being able to track the trajectory of the missile. In this paper, two methods are proposed to estimate the ballistic coefficient for classifying the missile. The main techniques used are extended Kalman filter and ordinary differential equation parameter estimation. The true missile trajectory was created through the simulation, and the proposed method was used to estimate the ballistic coefficient, and their performances were compared and analyzed.