Optimal Proportional Navigation Guidance Using Pseudo Sensor Enhancement Method (PSEM) for Flexible Interceptor Applications

Proportional navigation (PN) is the guidance law used by most missiles in operational use today. This method of guidance generates missile acceleration commands in proportion to the line-of-sight (LOS) rate. Flexible interceptor defines as a fast maneuverable fighter plane. So, optimal homing missile guidance must be required to improve realism in missile behavior. In the case of sensor(s) transient faults, the disconnection of the readings causes inappropriate actions. So the need for sensor fault detecting and estimating multiple sensor faults becomes an important issue to optimize and enhance the system performance. Redundant sensors can provide highly accurate sensor data and also reconfigure sensor network systems if some sensors failed. In this paper, optimal sensor configurations are investigated using a new proposed pseudo sensor enhancement method (PSEM). Fault detection prediction analysis of multi-sensor architecture is introduced to study different number of sensors with different arrangement architectures and to detect transient faults in each sensor. Then, the proposed PSEM is investigated to isolate and compensate for the transient faults. Finally, the optimal inertial navigation multi-sensor configurations using PSEM have been applied to the proportional navigation guidance (PNG) laws to investigate the optimal proportional navigation guidance. The simulation results of different sensor architecture configurations with applying the PSEM and PNG have been obtained and analyzed to demonstrate the performance. The comparison between the traditional (without PSEM) and the proposed (with PSEM) methods has been introduced to illustrate the enhancement in operational performance of the proposed method to meet the requirements for flexible interceptor applications.