Tracking with Steady-State Optimization: an Application to Air-Breathing Hypersonic Vehicle Control

The specific control problem addressed in the paper is the design of controllers that ensure asymptotic tracking of output reference trajectories for overactuated systems. The redundancy in the input space is used to optimize the steady-state performance of the closed-loop system. Since the considered plant models are not square, the control input and state trajectories in steady state that enforce perfect tracking are not unique. The proposed methodology employs a continuous parameterization of all possible steady state input trajectories, that is used for optimizing the selection of the steady state input, while providing perfect tracking and fulfillment of constraints on the magnitude of the control input. An application to altitude and velocity tracking control for an hypersonic vehicle employing air-breathing (scramjet) propulsion is presented and discussed