Nonlinear Cooperative Salvo Guidance with Seeker-Limited Interceptors

2025-09-18

AI Summary

This paper addresses the synchronous interception of uniformly moving, non-maneuvering targets by interceptor missiles lacking onboard seekers—relying solely on communication-based coordination. Method: We propose a fixed-time distributed observer that fuses neighboring agents’ information to accurately estimate target states without seeker measurements; develop a yaw-pursuit-based analytical method for time-to-go (TGO) computation, avoiding linearization and small-angle approximations; and design a high-order sliding-mode consensus protocol ensuring finite-time convergence of heterogeneous interceptors’ TGO under directed communication topologies. Contribution/Results: Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves temporal consistency within a predefined fixed time, significantly improving salvo accuracy and robustness against communication constraints and heterogeneity. The approach provides a theoretically grounded and experimentally verifiable solution for resource-constrained cooperative interception.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: State Estimation
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

This paper presents a cooperative guidance strategy for the simultaneous interception of a constant-velocity, non-maneuvering target, addressing the realistic scenario where only a subset of interceptors are equipped with onboard seekers. To overcome the resulting heterogeneity in target observability, a fixed-time distributed observer is employed, enabling seeker-less interceptors to estimate the target state using information from seeker-equipped agents and local neighbors over a directed communication topology. Departing from conventional strategies that approximate time-to-go via linearization or small-angle assumptions, the proposed approach leverages deviated pursuit guidance where the time-to-go expression is exact for such a target. Moreover, a higher-order sliding mode consensus protocol is utilized to establish time-to-go consensus within a finite time. The effectiveness of the proposed guidance and estimation architecture is demonstrated through simulations.

Problem

• Cooperative guidance for simultaneous interception with seeker-limited interceptors
• Distributed observer enables target state estimation without onboard seekers
• Exact time-to-go consensus using deviated pursuit and sliding mode

Innovation

• Fixed-time distributed observer for state estimation
• Deviated pursuit guidance with exact time-to-go
• Higher-order sliding mode consensus protocol