Cooperative Interception in a Multi-Missile Engagement
Vitaly Shaferman, Yaakov Oshman · 2009
Two estimators are presented, that enable cooperative target tracking of several missiles intercepting a single maneuvering target. The flrst estimator is a nonlinear adaptation of an interacting multiple model fllter, whereas the second estimator is a multiple model particle fllter. The paper develops the fllters for the cooperative and non-cooperative estimation modes, and investigates their individual estimation performance, using a nonlinear two-dimensional simulation. An extensive Monte Carlo study is used to demonstrate the viability of the cooperative estimation concept, for both estimators. It is shown that the closed loop interception performance of two cooperating missiles, guided by an optimal guidance law, improves, when compared to that of non-cooperating missiles. The particle fllter based estimator demonstrates hit-to-kill closed loop interception performance in the cooperative mode, but requires higher computational load than the extended Kalman fllter based estimator, making the choice of estimator a tradeofi between performance and computational power.