Multi-model control design for longitudinal dynamics of fixed-wing UAV

It is of great significance to study on the automatic flight control system since it's the decisive and dominant factor for the flight performance of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). As for the longitudinal dynamics of F-16 UAV with strong nonlinearity, the multi-model control law is studied and designed in this paper, whose basic control principle is considered to be of hierarchical structure where LQR (linear quadratic regulator) is presented for the inner loop of velocity-pitch angle control and PID controller is brought forward for altitude loop. The switch strategy within the multi-model control scheme is proposed based on the mapping of square of velocity. Finally, the simulation results show that multi-model controller obtains desirable performance in terms of both static error and amplitude limiting of control input.