Future state prediction based on observer for missile system

Abstract: Guided missile accuracy and precision is negatively impacted by seeker delay, more specifically by the delay introduced by a mechanical seeker gimbal and the computational time taken to process the raw data. To meet the demands and expectations of modern missiles systems, the impact of this hardware limitation must be reduced. This paper presents a new observer design that predicts the future state of a seeker signal, augmenting the guidance system to mitigate the effects of this delay. The design is based on a novel two-step differentiator, which produces the estimated future time derivatives of the signal. The input signal can be nonlinear and provides for simple integration into existing systems. A bespoke numerical guided missile simulation is used to demonstrate the performance of the observer within a missile guidance system. Both non-manoeuvring and randomly manoeuvring target engagement scenarios are considered.