SUBTITLE Real - Time Computational Methods for SDRE Nonlinear Control of Missiles

The state dependent Riccati equation (SDRE) technique is a recently developed methodology for designing control laws and estimation algorithms for missile flight control. Although its potential is well recognized by control theory experts, the industry acceptance of the technique has been slow. The main reasons for this are: a) unlike linear control technology, the SDRE approach requires advanced numerical methods for its implementation, which are not currently available off-the-shelf, b) the perception that this technique may not be computationally feasible for real-time implementation on flight control processors. Both of these issues are addressed in this paper. A software package for real-time implementation of the SDRE technique was developed during the present research. The execution of this software at speeds up to 2 kHz sample rates on problems of the size commonly encountered in missile flight control applications was then demonstrated on commercial off-theshelf processors.