Design of missile autopilot using PI and approximate feedback linearization control with time-delay adaptation scheme

A straight forward application of feedback linearization to the missile autopilot design for acceleration control may be limited due to the nonminimum characteristics and the model uncertainties. As a remedy, this paper presents a cascade structure of an acceleration controller based on approximate feedback linearization methodology with a time-delay adaptation scheme. The inner loop controller is constructed by applying feedback linearization to the approximate system which is a minimum phase system and provides the desired acceleration signal caused by the angle-of-attack. This controller is augmented by the time-delay adaptive scheme and the outer loop PI (proportional-integral) controller in order to adaptively compensate for feedback linearization error because of model uncertainty and in order to track the desired acceleration signal. The performance of the proposed method is examined through numerical simulations.