Design and analysis of missile three-loop autopilot with pseudo-angle of attack feedback

For several classical acceleration autopilots, the topologies evolvement is presented firstly. To improve the performance of classical three-loop autopilot, a new three-loop autopilot with pseudo-angle of attack feedback is proposed. The relation between engineering index and closed system poles and the transform technology from state feedback into output feedback are discussed, and a general design method for the new three-loop topology autopilot based on the output feedback pole assignment is proposed. It is concluded that the new three-loop autopilot can eliminate the static error of the classical three-loop topology and has some similarities of the control characteristics and robustness. Both of the new and classical three-loop autopilots can stabilize a static unstable missile very well.