Integrated terrain following algorithm for UCAV

This paper proposes an integrated terrain following algorithm for Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV). Terrain following is very important for UCAV because UCAV should fly close to ground to avoid being detected by enemy´s radar, which may improve the survivability of UCAV performing dangerous mission such as SEAD. In this study, input/output structure is defined for each algorithm for combining whole algorithm. After that, particular guidance, navigation, and trajectory generation algorithms are selected which are appropriate for terrain following. To deal with GPS jamming, terrain referenced navigation based on nonlinear filter is chosen. Voronoi diagram is adopted to generate horizontal plane path to avoid enemy´s air defenses. Moreover, cubic spline method is used to generate vertical plane path to prevent collisions with ground while flying close to surface. Pure pursuit tracking method, which is look-ahead point based guidance algorithm, is applied for guidance. Numerical simulation is performed to verify the performance of the integrated terrain following algorithm.