Energy Optimal Waypoint Guidance Synthesis for Antiship Missiles

Abstract

Planar waypoint guidance synthesis methods for antiship missiles (ASMs) using optimal guidance laws are proposed. The energy optimal trajectory optimization problem with waypoint constraints is converted to an unconstrained optimization problem of finding the optimal boundary conditions at waypoints for the guidance laws. An optimal guidance law (OGL) for a 1st-order lag ASM with terminal constraints on the impact angle and lateral acceleration is newly proposed for this purpose. The proposed method produces the energy optimal trajectory with high numerical efficiency. If the ASM is approximated by a lag-free system, optimal boundary conditions become waypoint passing angles which can be simply determined from a set of linear algebraic equations. Since there are no time-consuming numerical optimizations in this approach, the energy optimal trajectory passing through all the waypoints can be generated in real time.