Midcourse trajectory optimization strategy for air-to-air missile based on Gauss Pseudo-spectral Method

Trajectory optimization of the air-to-air missile is studied via Gauss Pseudospectral Method. The trajectory optimal problem of air-to-air missile is transformed into a nonlinear programming problem through the Gauss Pseudospectral Method. During solving the optimal trajectory, the state and control variables on Gauss nodes are chosen as parameters to be optimized, and the optimal performance index is the minimum time. A new strategy of initial value generating is proposed to deal with the difficulties in determining the initial value of the optimization variables. The strategy includes: tracking a variety of conic trajectories by given tracking control law, then generating the initial values of optimization variables based on the shortest time trajectory. The efficiency and practicality of this method are demonstrated by the numerical experiment.