Unified Method for Field-of-View-Limited Homing Guidance

Homing guidance requires maintaining the target lock-on condition within the seeker’s field of view (FOV). This paper aims at developing a unified FOV-limited guidance framework from which a variety of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) guidance laws can be derived. First, the unified method for 2D homing guidance is established by augmenting an arbitrary baseline guidance law with a biased command. To mitigate the effect on the baseline guidance law, this biased command is designed in the admissible range that respects the FOV limit and only takes effect when the lead angle approaches the FOV bound. For more practical relevance, the autopilot dynamic of any order is further considered explicitly in the design with a recursive approach. Then, the unified method for 3D homing guidance with coupling nonlinearity is developed by exploiting the geometric relation among space angles. Unlike existing similar results, the proposed design requires neither switch logic nor numerical algorithms, which allows for continuous guidance command and convenient implementation. With the proposed method, various illustrative guidance laws are derived to demonstrate the significance of the unified framework. Finally, numerical simulations with comparative study are conducted to support the analytical findings and show the superiority of the proposed method.