Sliding Mode Guidance Law for Impact Time Control Without Explicit Time-to-Go Estimation

This paper presents an impact time control guidance law that does not perform explicit time-to-go estimation. In order to satisfy the interception and the desired impact time constraint simultaneously, a sliding surface variable formulated as a sum of the relative range and the desired time-to-go is defined, weighted by two nonzero weighting functions. Then, the achievement of the sliding mode satisfies the following equivalence: The relative range is zero if and only if the elapsed time equals to the desired impact time. It means that both the interception and impact time control can be satisfied at the same time in the sliding mode. The impact time control guidance law is derived to enforce the defined surface variable to the sliding mode. Because the law is designed based on the capture condition without separate time-to-go estimation process, the achievement of the sliding mode always guarantees the interception of the target at the desired impact time. In addition, the proposed law can be applied to an engagement considering nonstationary targets in a straightforward manner because the corresponding time-to-go estimation is not needed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed guidance law has better performance in comparison with the existing guidance law, in respect of satisfying the desired impact time constraint against a nonstationary target.