An L 1 adaptive closed-loop guidance law for an orbital injection problem

Abstract

The current paper presents the determination of a closed-loop guidance law for an orbital injection problem using two different approaches and, considering the existing time-optimal open-loop trajectory as the nominal solution, compares the advantages of the two proposed strategies. In the first method, named neighbouring optimal control (NOC), the perturbation feedback method is utilized to determine the closed-loop trajectory in an analytical form for the non-linear system. This law, which produces feedback gains, is in general a function of small perturbations appearing in the states and constraints separately. The second method uses an L₁ adaptive strategy in determination of the non-linear closed-loop guidance law. The main advantages of this method include characteristics such as improvement of asymptotic tracking, guaranteed time-delay margin, and smooth control input. The accuracy of the two methods is compared by introducing a high-frequency sinusoidal noise. The simulation results indicate that the L₁ adaptive strategy has a better performance than the NOC method to track the nominal trajectory when the noise amplitude is increased. On the other hand, the main advantage of the NOC method is its ability to solve a non-linear, two-point, boundary-value problem in the minimum time.