Differential game guidance considering interceptor´s direct lift and range dependent estimation delay

The paper presents a new differential game guidance law for intercepting highly maneuvering targets while having noisy measurements. The proposed law takes into account the interceptor\´s direct lift associated with canard or tail aerodynamic control surfaces and the target\´s maneuver dynamics. The capture conditions for both configurations are presented and it is shown that the direct lift generated by a canard configuration reduces the requirements on the missile\´s maneuverability and dynamic response time. For the implementation in a noise-corrupted environment, a first order Gauss Markov process is used for the target acceleration model and the perfect information guidance law is modified to take into account the inherent delay in estimating the target\´s acceleration. By modeling the delay as being range dependent instead of constant as was done in a recent study, the need for searching for the "best" delay is eliminated. The improved performance of the new guidance law is confirmed by a set of Monte Carlo simulations.