Performance Evaluation of Homing Guidance Methods

A guided missile must be endowed with sufficient intelligence to acquire information for keeping it on course to the target, whether it was stationary or mobile. The guidance commands are generated to control the missile motion relative to target in accordance to the observed and estimated parameters for target motion. The necessity for guiding the missile motion is given by (1) the need to compensate for the non-standard conditions of the medium, technology, propulsion for the achievement of the desired accuracy, especially at greater ranges, (2) the need of reacting on the target maneuver during its flight, and (3) the need for conducting fire behind terrain undulations and artificial obstacles. According to the guidance and control philosophy utilized to control the missile motion and the location of the guidance computer, there are five types of guidance: Homing guidance, Autonomous guidance, Beam rider guidance, Command guidance and Combined guidance systems. The Homing Guidance may be active using onboard transceiver to provide the guidance signals, semi-active which combines an onboard receiver with external illuminator and passive which home on energy generated by the target. The performance of the guidance system is dependent upon the utilized guidance method which constraints the vehicles attitude during its flight. Therefore, this paper is devoted to evaluate the performance of homing guidance methods via the solution of the derived equations of c.g. motion in conjunction with ideal bond equations either numerically or analytically. The guidance performance is analyzed via flight path parameters obtained from the equations' solution. Note that the analytical solution can be very complex unless some simplifying assumptions are considered such as planer motion, constant speeds, etc. Then, the obtained equations are programmed as functions within the MATLAB environment (or any high level language) and the simulation is conducted using different engagements’ scenarios. The results justify the capabilities of each guidance method according to the engagement scenario and it will be of great value to young researchers and designers.