A small-gain method for integrated guidance and control in terminal phase of reentry

The guidance and control systems of reentry vehicles are usually designed separately and then integrated, but the scheme can be argued that synergistic relationships between the two subsystems are not fully exploited. In order to improve the performance of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs), this paper proposes an integrated guidance and control law for approach and landing of a RLV. According to the idea of reference-trajectory guidance, the angle of attack and bank angle commands are designed using sliding mode control (SMC) method to make the reference-trajectory tacking error converge into a small neighborhood of zero. An integrated guidance and control (IGC) law is developed utilizing generalized small-gain theorem to enforce the commands, and theoretical analysis shows that the law can guarantee the stability of the overall system. The Monte Carlo simulation confirms the effectiveness of the proposed design approach.