Agile Missile Autopilot Design Using Nonlinear Backstepping Control with Time-Delay Adaptation

This paper deals with a nonlinear adaptive autopilot design for agile missile systems. In advance of the autopilot design, an investigation of the agile turn maneuver, based on the trajectory optimization, is performed to determine state behaviors during the agile turn phase. This investigation shows that there exist highly nonlinear, rapidly changing dynamics and aerodynamic uncertainties. To handle of these difficulties, we propose a longitudinal autopilot for angle-of-attack tracking based on backstepping control methodology in conjunction with the time-delay adaptation scheme. The performance of the proposed method is investigated through nonlinear 6-DOF simulations. An intercept scenario is performed to explore the applicability of the proposed control methodology to agile missile systems.