Multi-Input Multi-Output Nonlinear Autopilot Design for Ship-to-Ship Missiles

In this paper, a design method of nonlinear autopilot for ship-to-ship missiles is proposed. Ship-to-ship missiles have strongly coupled dynamics through roll, yaw, and pitch channel in comparison with general STT type missiles. Thus it becomes difficult to employ previous control design method directly since we should find three different solutions for each control fin deflection and should verify the stability for more complicated dynamics. In this study, we first propose a control loop structure for roll, yaw, and pitch autopilot which can determine the required angles of all three control fins. For yaw and pitch autopilot design, missile model is reduced to a minimum phase model by applying a singular perturbation like technique to the yaw and pitch dynamics. Based on this model, a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear autopilot is designed. And the stability is analyzed considering roll influences on dynamic couplings of yaw and pitch channel as well as the aerodynamic couplings. Some additional issues on the autopilot implementation for these coupled missile dynamics are discussed. Lastly, 6-DOF (degree of freedom) numerical simulation results are presented to verify the proposed method.