International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

State-Space Modeling of Missile Two Loop

Autopilot
A. Chowdhury
Department of Electronics &
Communication Engineering,

S. Das
Department of Electrical Engineering,
NIT Agartala, India
erswapandas@gmail.com

NIT Agartala, India

atanunita@gmail.com,

Abstract- The state space modeling of missile two loop

autopilot has been presented here. The aim of the
present work is to improve steady state performance of
the flight path rate demand two loop autopilot in
pitch plane called lateral autopilot. In this work,
state space model of the two loop autopilot is derived
and the state feedback controller with and without
integral control are designed using Pole Placement
technique. Bass and Guras approach is used to find
the value of feedback gain matrix. A numerical example
has been considered and
the simulation results
obtained through MATLAB software are discussed
According to the simulation result, state feedback
controller with integral control has the better
performance in terms of steady state error than the
state feedback controller.

technique is used for the state feedback controller

with and without integral control since it has the best
performance compared to other controllers in terms
of oscillation and settling time[10]. Bass and Guras
formula [11] is used to find the value of feedback
gain matrix. Each controller performance is analyzed
with unit step response. Finally, the performance [12]
of the state feedback Controller and state feedback
Controller with integral control is compared based on
the MATLAB simulation result.

Key words- Missile, Two-loop Autopilot, Pitch plane, rate

gyro, Accelerometer, state feedback controller

I.

INTRODUCTION

A Flight path rate demand Two loop autopilot in

pitch plane obtained from the conventional
configuration of Two loop lateral autopilot in pitch
plane with one Accelerometer and one rate Gyro [1]
has been considered for this work and shown in Fig.1
where the steady state gain of the autopilot system is
non-unity. In [2], the present authors attempted to
improve the steady state performance of the two loop
lateral autopilot by frequency domain approach. The
present work deals with the improvement of steady
state performance with time domain approach. This
work is focused on the application of the pole
placement technique [3] to design autopilot feedback
gain matrix. The state space model [4,5] of the two
loop autopilot is derived and the state feedback
controller [6,7,8] is designed based on the state space
model. After that, State-Feedback controller with
integral control [9] is designed to overcome the
problem faced in achieving desired response by
State-Feedback controller. Pole-Placement design

Fig. 1.Flight Path Rate Demand Two Loop Autopilot in pitch plane

II.

MISSILE AUTOPILOT

A Guided missile is one which receives steering

commands from the guided system to improve its
accuracy. Guidance system actually gives command
to the autopilot to activate the controls to achieve the
correctionnecessary.Autopilot is an automatic control
mechanism for keeping the spacecraft in desired
flight path. An autopilot in a missile is a close loop
system and it is a minor loop inside the main
guidance loop. If the missile carries accelerometer
and rate gyros to provide additional feedback into the
missile servos to modify the missile motion then the
missile control system is usually called an autopilot.
When the autopilot controls the motion in the pitch

ISBN 978-1-4799-3158-3
657

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

and the yaw plane, they are called lateral autopilot.

is damping ratio of actuator ;

a

is a quantity whose inverse determines the

locations of non-minimum phase zeros .

B. NumericalValues
The following numerical data for a class of guided
missile have been considered [1] for MATLAB
simulation,
Fig.2. Three axes of a missile body

Table1. Autopilot System Design Parameters

For a symmetrical cruciform missile pitch and the

yaw autopilots are identical. The guidance system
detects whether the missile is flying too high or too
low, or too much to the left or right. It measures the
deviation or errors and sends signals to the control
system to minimize the errors. The lateral autopilot of
a guided missile is a servo system delivering lateral
acceleration (latax) according to the demand from the
guidance computer. For aerodynamically controlled
skid to run missile the autopilot activates to move the
control surfaces suitably for orienting the missile
body with respect to the flight path. This action
generates angle of attack and consequently latax for
steering the missile in the desired path. Fig.2 shows
the axes of a missile body [13,14,15,16,17] .

Control
gain

k k
p

5.69

III.

is lateral autopilot control gain of outer loop

11.77

0.00029

rad / S ec s

180

0.6

-9.91

STATE SPACE MODELING

)
h
h

h ge
)
h
)

ion)

0
1
0
0

0
0
a
a
a
x1
x1 0
2
2
2
2
x
x K 2
2 2
1 b Ta Kbb

T
1
2
2
b
a
Kbb Ta
2 q a u
0

2 2
2 2
x3
Ta
Ta 1 b
Ta 1 b x3 0

2 2
x4
Kbb2 2
1
x4 0
2 2 1 b

Kbb

Ta
Ta
Ta

is the incidence lag of the air frame ;

is Elevator deflection ;

y 0

x1
x
1 2
x3

x4

Using numerical values of Table- 1,the above

a

is airframe aerodynamic gain ;

is flight path rate ;

0.36

The open loop state model of the two loop autopilot

system in matrix form is

rad / S ec s

-0.07

is fin servo gain ;

(
(
(
(

is missile body rate in pitch ;

The state model of the two loop autopilot is derived

by defining the following states:

A. Nomenclature

is natural frequency of actuator ;

equation can be written as

is weather cock frequency ;

ISBN 978-1-4799-3158-3
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International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

x1
0
1
0
0 x1 0

x

32400

216
0
0 x2 2268
2

u
474.0782
0
2.778 50.616 x3 0
x3

1.1059 0.0001154 2.888 2.778 x4 0

x 4
y 0

IV.

x1
x
0 1 2
x3

x4

and

an 1
a
n2
W

a1

Or, K K1

an 2

a1

1
0

K2

Kn

The output response of full state feedback controller

obtained with the numerical values is shown in fig.4

STATE FEEDBACK CONTROLLER

A. State feedback controller

The method of feed-backing all the state variables to

the input of the system through a suitable feedback
matrix in the control strategy is known as the fullstate variable feedback control technique. This
approach is also known as the pole-placement control
design.In this paper, the state feedback controller is
designed using pole placement technique via Bass
and Guras formula.

Fig.4 step response of two loop autopilot using state feedback

Controller

B. State Feedback Controller With Integral

Control
One of the major disadvantage of state feedback
controller design by using only the pole-placement is
the introduction of a large steady-state error.In order
to compensate this problem, an integral control is
added where it will eliminate the steady-state error in
responding to a step input. Figure.5 shows the block
diagram of the system with the integral control added
into
it.

Fig.3 Block diagram of system with state feedback control.

The general state space equation for the block

diagram as shown in Fig.3 is
(t) = (A-BK)x(t) + Br(t)
Bass and Guras formula to determine the state
feedback gain matrix (K) is,
K [( a)]T 1
5
Where
= coefficient of desired characteristics equation
a = coefficient of system characteristics equation
T = transformation matrix=

QCW

Fig.5 Block diagram of system with state feedback and integral

control.

QC = Controllability matrix

ISBN 978-1-4799-3158-3
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International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

K K1

One way to introduce integral control is to

augment the state vector with the desired
integral.That is, the state x as well as the integral
of error is feedback by augmenting the state x with
the extra integral state

K K1

xi t r t y t dt

K3

K n1

K n

K n 1 and

The output response of full state feedback controller

with Integral Control obtained with the numerical
values is shown in fig.6

x i t r t y t dt r t Cx(t )

K 2

K3

K I K n

xi defined by the equation,

K2

x i t is easily included by augmenting the

original system,
(t) = Ax(t) + Bu(t)
y = C x(t)
as follows:

x t A 0 x t A u t 0 r t
1

C 0 xI t 0

xI t
y t C

V.

x
0
xI

x
Ki
xI
substituting it into the above equation ,
Define

Fig.6 Step response of two loop autopilot using state feedback

controller with integral control

u t K

x t A BK

C
xI t
y t C

BKi x t 0
r t

0 xI t 1
x
0
xI

SIMULINK REPRESENTATION

Fig.-7, & Fig.-8 show state feedback controller

and state feedback controller with integral
control built in MATLAB Simulink .

and

10

11

Now let,
Fig.7Simulink model of state feedback controller

A
A
C

0
0

and

B
B
0

The controllability matrix, QC , can be obtained

using the A and B above. Now, the state feedback

gain matrix can be derived as follows:
K n an n 1 an 1

1 a1 T 1

12
Fig.8 Simulink model of state feedback controller with integral
Control

Therefore,

ISBN 978-1-4799-3158-3
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International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

VI.

[2] A. Chowdhury and S. DasAnalysis and Design of Missile

Twoloop Autopilot International Journal of Advance in
Electronic and Electric Engineering. ISSN 22311297,Vol.3,No. 8,pp.959- 964,2013
[3] Wang Lei, Meng Xiu-yun, Xia Qun-li and Guo Tao, Design
of Autopilot with Pole Placement and State-Observer
feedback, published in IEEE International Conference on
Computer Science and Automation Engineering (CSAE),
Vol., pp. 53-56, June 2011
[4] P. Bhowmick and G. Das, Modification of Classical Two
Loop Lateral Missile Autopilot Design using Reduced
OrderObserver (DGO) and LQR, in International IEEE
conference on ICCCNT12, July 2012.
[5] J.J. DAzzo and C. H. Houpious, Linear Control System
, Analysis & Design, McGraw Hill, New York, 1995
[6] M. Gopal, Digital Control and State Variable methods, 2nd
Edition, Tata McGraw Hill, 2003.
[7] K. Ogata, Modern Control Engineering, 5th Edition,
New Delhi, Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd, 2010
[8] E.S.Shin and K.W.Lee, Robust Output Feedback Control of
Robot Manipulators using High-Gain
Observer,Proceedings of the IEEE International
Conference on Control
[9] Purtojo and Wahyudi, Integral Anti-windup Scheme of
Full-state Feedback Control for Point-to-point (PTP)
Positioning System, International Conference on
Electronic Design ,Penang, Malaysia, December, 2008
[10] G.Sub, D.S.Hyun, J.Park, K.D.Lee, S.G.Lee,Design of a
Pole Placement Controller for ReducingOscillation and
Settling Time in a Two-Inertia Motor System, 27th
Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics
Society, 2001.
[11] N.S.Nise, Control Systems Engineering, John Wiley
&
Sons, 4th Edition, pp 764-767, 2004
[12] C. N. Regier J. K. Pieper, Examination of Controller
Performance and Robustness versus Control Effort:
Experimental Control of DC Motor Position, IEEE
CCECE/CCGEI, pp.763-769,Saskatoon, May 2005
[13] P.Garnell and D.J. East,Guided Weapon Control
Systems, Pergamon press, 1977
[14] A.L Greensite Analysis and Design of Space Vehicle
Flight Control System. SpartonBooks. Vol-2,1970.
[15] B Etkins Dynamics of flight stability and control Jhon
Wiley and Sons, 1982.
[16] J.H Blakelock.Automatic control of aircraft and
Missiles, Jhon Wiley and Sons, 1965
[17] D. C Foreman, C. H. Tournes, Y. B. Shtessel, Integrated
Missile Flight Control Using Quaternions and Third-Order
Sliding Mode Control , 11th International Workshop on
Variable Structure Systems, Mexico, June, 2010.

COMPARISON OF RESULTS

Fig.-9 shows the MATLAB simulation results of

state feedback controller and state feedback
controller with integral control designed for the two
loop autopilot system. It is seen that the steady state
error of the autopilot system is eliminated and a
unity steady state gain of the autopilot system is
achieved.

Fig:9 Comparison of output response for state feedback

controller and State Feedback controller with Integral
control

VII.

CONCLUSIONS

In this study, the state model of the flight path rate

demand two loop autopilot in pitch plane has been
developed and State feedback with and without
integral control based on pole placement technique
via Bass Guras method has been designed to
improve the steady state performance of the flight
path rate demand two loop auto pilot system .A
numerical illustration is provided and the steady state
performance has been analyzed and compared using
the step response through MATLAB software. It has
been shown that the state feedback controller with
integral control eliminates the large steady state error
introduced by the state feedback controller.
According to the simulation result, state feedback
controller with integral control is better than the state
feedback controller without integral control

REFERENCES
[1] G. Das, K. Dutta, T. K. Ghosal, and S. K. Goswami,
Structured Design Methodology of Missile Autopilot ,
Institute of Engineers (I) journal EL, Kolkata, India,
pp 49-59, November 1996

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661