Trajectory estimation of higher-tier ballistic targets

Trajectory estimation of ballistic missiles and guidance design for establishing anti-missile defense systems are extremely important to the defense industry. Comparing to the conventional estimation theory and guidance design, the plant under consideration, which consists of the interceptor and target, exhibits highly nonlinearity, unmodeled uncertainty and external disturbances leading it to a challenge problem for guidance and control design. This paper intends to develop a trajectory estimation algorithm for the higher-tier reentry targets. The design is based on the adaptive Kalman filtering technique with the capability of input estimation that uses the target information acquired from the ground based radar to estimate the maneuverable target's trajectory.