Guidance and control of a cruise missile flying along a geomagnetic isoline

Caifa Guo, Hong Cai & G.H.M. van der Heijden

This paper presents a new guidance method for cruise missiles, which makes use of geomagnetic isolines. The isolines are extracted by using bilinear interpolation in the geomagnetic contour map. Path tracking is implemented in the geomagnetic map and takes into account the dynamics of the missile and its constraints. For this, the dynamic equations for the missile during its cruise phase are established. Using an inverse dynamics guidance law to implement the simulation experiments, the simulation results show that missile flight along a geomagnetic isoline is theoretically feasible. As the path made up of isoline points is determined, the missile can follow the isoline with a path tracking controller.

keywords: cruise missile, guidance, isoline, path tracking, inverse dynamics

Proc. IMechE Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering 228, 1215-1224 (2014)