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Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Suboptimal period design for a maneuvering missile to evade tracking filters

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The engagement between an antiship missile and a ship’s defense system is investigated. The missile is equipped with proportional navigation guidance for homing in on its ship target. The ship’s defense system consists of a radar, an estimation system (the extended Kalman filter and the “jump filter” are used), and a gun system. The performance index is defined as the estimated number of hits (EHITS) of projectiles on the missile. The main objective of this dissertation is to determine maneuvering periods for the missile which minimize the EHITS to evade the ship’s gunfire under different engagement conditions. The maneuvering periods are design parameters in the missile’s controls of both the vertical and the horizontal planes. The engagement conditions are the follows: the maximum amplitude of the maneuvering functions, the homing in position of the missile on the ship, the measurement noise condition of the ship’s radar, and the missile’s model assumed in the ship’s filters. The missile’s control functions considered are periodic and of specific types (sinusoidal, square and sawtooth waveforms); therefore, the periods which minimize the EHITS in this study are suboptimal for the general engagement problem. Two methods are used to obtain the suboptimal periods: one is the ”brute force" method of computing the EHITS for certain equally spaced periods, the other uses an optimization software to search for the minimum point. The results show that the curve of EHITS vs. period is monotonically decreasing until it reaches a minimum point. The optimal period increases with an increase in measurement noise. Among the three waveforms used, the square wave gives the smallest optimal period and the sawtooth wave gives the largest one. The sinusoidal waveform with the period of 1.9 seconds is recommended. We consider the missile's performance against a perfect radar, a modern radar, and an earlier model radar. The optimum EHITS resulting from the optimal periods are between two and three EHITS for all three radars considered.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph. D.
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Year dc:date.issued
1988

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Lai, Lin-Ying
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Stalford, Harold L.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Cliff, Eugene M.
  • Lutze, Frederick H.
  • Burns, John A.
  • Hendricks, Scott L.

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en_US

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/10919/53564
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/53564

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

Lai, Lin-Ying. Suboptimal period design for a maneuvering missile to evade tracking filters. doctoral thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/53564