Practical MPC solution to attitude control independent of angular velocity measurements

This paper presents a practical model predictive attitude control method for aerodynamic flight vehicles with wide envelope and independent of angular velocity measurements. At first, the original nonlinear longitudinal dynamics is compensated by an extended state observer, and the compensated system can be approximated by a second-order integrator. Then a modified generalized predictive control algorithm is derived for this second-order integrator model wherein an explicit solution of the control signal can be obtained in a straightforward manner. In this process, the angular velocity is not needed at all and only a sole gain-scheduled strategy is employed. The proposed control strategy is in a linear form although it can be applied to the nonlinear systems. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.