Capturability of RTPN against Arbitrarily Maneuvering Target

The performance of RTPN against the arbitrarily maneuvering target was analyzed before. However, the analysis was under the capture definition which required the final miss distance to be zero and the closing speed to be smaller than zero during the whole guidance process. This definition is unrealistic, because the requirement of zero miss distance is too stringent, while the requirement of the negative closing speed is too loose. In this paper, the capturability of RTPN is analyzed under a more realistic definition of capture, which requires the final relative range to be smaller than an acceptable miss distance, i.e., nonzero miss distance, and the absolute value of the closing speed to be larger than an acceptable impact speed, i.e., nonzero closing speed. Furthermore, the acceleration saturation of the missile is considered. The nonlinear relative dynamics between the missile and the target is taken into full account. The theoretical findings are demonstrated by numerical simulations.