Adaptive backstepping impact angle control with autopilot dynamics and acceleration saturation consideration

This paper presents a robust impact angle constraint guidance law for maneuvering target interception in the presence of autopilot dynamics and input saturation. The presented guidance law is designed on the basis of a combination of adaptive backstepping control technique and higher‐order sliding mode differentiator. Different from existing impact angle constraint guidance law using sliding mode control, the line‐of‐sight angular rate and impact angle tracking error are regulated by two different virtual control laws. Because the future course of action of the target, an independent entity, cannot be predicted beforehand, adaptive laws are introduced in guidance law derivation for disturbance rejection. Unlike dynamic surface control approach, higher‐order sliding mode differentiator is adopted here as an alternative way to obtain the derivatives of the virtual control laws, thus leading to the exact tracking performance of backstepping control. Detailed stability analysis shows that both the line‐of‐sight angular rate and impact angle error can be stabilized in a small region around zero asymptotically. Simulation results explicitly show that accurate interception is achieved with a wide range of impact angles. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.