Design of optimal midcourse guidance sliding-mode control for missiles with TVC

This work discusses a nonlinear midcourse missile controller with thrust vector control (TVC) inputs for the interception of a theater ballistic missile, including autopilot system and guidance system. First, a three degree-of-freedom (DOF) optimal midcourse guidance law is designed to minimize the control effort and the distance between the missile and the target. Then, converting the acceleration command from guidance law into attitude command, a quaternion-based sliding-mode attitude controller is proposed to track the attitude command and to cope with the effects from variations of missile's inertia, aerodynamic force, and wind gusts. The exponential stability of the overall system is thoroughly analyzed via Lyapunov stability theory. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed guidance law and the associated TVC.     

Deducing turbulence parameters from transionospheric scintillation measurements

The theoretical framework and experimental methodology used to interpret observations of ionospheric scintillations in terms of geophysical processes are reviewed and recent experimental observations of ionospheric scintillations are discussed in this paper. During the past 15 years significant progress has been made in several areas. In particular, significant advances have been made in theoretical understanding of the strong scintillation regime and the effects of short-term temporal variations of the scintillation producing irregularities on observations made with spaced-receiver geometries in both weak and strong scintillations. This improved understanding of the scintillation process has significantly increased the utility of the technique particularly in the equatorial latitudes where geometrical effects are least important.     

Development and verification of an innovative photomultiplier calibration system with a 10-fold increase in photometer resolution

In this study, we construct a photomultiplier calibration system. This calibration system can help scientists measuring and establishing the characteristic curve of the photon count versus light intensity. The system uses an innovative 10-fold optical attenuator to enable an optical power meter to calibrate photomultiplier tubes which have the resolution being much greater than that of the optical power meter. A simulation is firstly conducted to validate the feasibility of the system, and then the system construction, including optical design, circuit design, and software algorithm, is realized. The simulation generally agrees with measurement data of the constructed system, which are further used to establish the characteristic curve of the photon count versus light intensity.     

Scale analysis of pre- and post-midnight ESF bubbles at storm time and quiet time

This paper adopts a scale analysis technique to investigate the properties of intermediate-scale plasma structures observed by ROCSAT-1 in the equatorial F-region. A procedure of scale analysis that is developed via the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method of Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT) technique allows the mutually correlated components in velocity, density and relative density gradient to be identified and extracted. Comparing the three parameters, good match in wave form is found for density and velocity in the scales between kilometers and hundred meters (few kilometers to 300 m). It implies that there are electric fields proportional to density fluctuation −δn/n in the form similar to what is expected for the generalized Rayleigh–Taylor instability. We find that such a one-to-one match holds for various pre- and post-midnight ESF bubbles during quiet and storm times. It, therefore, means that spatial structures of electric field in the intermediate-scale (300 m to few kilometers) correlates to the density structures in a manner of δE ∝  −δn/n that is not necessarily depending on the driving mechanism of ESF bubbles, although it is known that ESF bubbles can be driven by different mechanisms under different space weather conditions. In smaller scales (300–50 m), fluctuation patterns of density and velocity do not correlate to each other any more, the good match is then found in the density gradient ∇_xn/n and velocity. It is known as the manifestation of the Boltzmann relation. We note that the GRT instability related relationship δV_z ∝  −δn/n for irregularities in scale of kilometers holds only for ESF bubbles that occur within ±5 dip latitude, while the Boltzmann relation (δV_z proportional to ∇_xn/n) holds for small-scale irregularities without such a limitation.     

Use of the Tapped Delay Line Adaptive Array to Increase the Number of Degrees of Freedom for Interference Suppression

A conjecture is made that a tapped delay line adaptive array of K elements can be used to suppress more than K - 1 noncoincidentcenter frequency interferers when the interferers operate within afraction of the signal bandwidth. This is possible because of theavailability in the increased number of degrees of freedom. Asimulation study is made verifying this conjecture for the case of atwo-element array and two interferers. Three and five tap sectionsare used in the simulation. The study indicates that the performanceimproves with increasing number of taps.     

Variability and climatology of precipitable water vapor from 12-year GPS observations in Taiwan

Because of global warming, global sea levels have risen, the frequency of drought in Taiwan is much more frequent in winter and spring, and rainfall tends to concentrate in summer. The probability of disaster-type weather has also increased significantly. Estimating precipitable water vapor (PWV) through GPS signals, related studies and analyses of weather conditions, and the effective use of meteorological forecasts have been valued by many meteorological research organizations and officials. In this study, PWV data from 2006 to 2017 and rainfall data were used for long-term harmonic analysis. PWV data calculated by ECMWF (ECMWF-PWV) and PWV data calculated by GPS (GPS-PWV) were subjected to regression analysis to verify the reliability of the GPS-PWV data. The research results show that GPS-PWV and ECMWF-PWV have extremely high correlations; however, the climatic characteristics of some regions and the high spatial resolution of GPS-PWV are able to accurately calculate the high topographic relief of small areas. It is judged that the GPS-PWV is more accurate than the ECMWF-PWV. It is worth noting that the PWV trend of the regions during the 6-year-before period has not changed very much, but the rainfall trend has changed obviously. Except for the eastern region, most of the regions show a decreasing trend year by year. More long-term observations are still needed to prove whether this phenomenon relates to global warming. Long-term rainfall analysis showed that the topography blocked water vapor to the western, southern, and mountainous regions, making them distinctly wet or dry. The harmonic curve showed great consistency with the peaks of PWV and rainfall. However, in the northern and eastern parts of the windward side, the time when maximum rainfall occurred each year may be one month later than the time when the maximum PWV value occurred each year. The reason for this difference is likely to be a decrease in the number of autumn typhoons, resulting in a nearly one-month difference in PWV peaks and rainfall peaks. Finally, we analyzed the linear trend of GPS-PWV and temperature for all regions in Taiwan, and found that annual increasing rate of GPS-PWV and temperature of all regions are within 0.4–0.5 mm/year and 0.04–0.11 C°/year, respectively.     

地月第二拉格朗日点卫星激光测距技术研究

介绍了月球/中继星激光测距的科学意义、研究状况和发展趋势;研究了地月第二拉格朗日点(L2点)纯反射式激光测距技术和任务设计,主要包含单体大孔径激光角锥反射器的设计与研制,以及基于云南天文台1.2 m望远镜的月球/中继星激光测距系统研究。研究结果表明:采用单脉冲能量3 J和10 ns脉宽脉冲激光器,预期系统能接收到的单脉冲回波光电子数约为0.74,单光子测距精度优于1 m。     

Generalized guidance law for homing missiles

The concept of a generalized guidance law is presented, and the closed-form solution for a homing missile pursuing a maneuvering target according to generalized guidance laws is given. It is shown that the guidance laws appearing in the literature are merely special cases of the one proposed by the authors. The derived generalized forms of capture area, missile acceleration, and homing time duration that are derived provide insight into the performance of the guidance laws being considered and lead to the discovery of new ones. The problem of finding a nonlinear optimal guidance law for a homing missile with controlled acceleration, applied so as to capture a maneuvering target with a predetermined trajectory while minimizing a weighted linear combination of time of capture and energy expenditures, is solved in closed form. The derived optimal control law is equal to the LOS (line of sight) rate multiplied by a trigonometric function of the aspect angle. Numerical simulation shows that the resulting guidance law appears to yield a significant advantage over true proportional navigation     

Gram-Schmidt forward-backward generalized sidelobe canceller

Addressed here is the the discrete-time and the continuous-time recursive least-squares (RLS) modified Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization (MGSO) algorithms for forward-backward (FB) generalized sidelobe cancelling (GSC) adaptive beamformers. The FB-GSC requires processing each input data twice, forward and conjugated backward, and hence its adaptation would require a rank-two update each time. This paper first derives a discrete-time rank-two-update RLS MGSO algorithm for this purpose. Then, by imposing the conjugate symmetry constraints, the backward data processing can be removed without any loss and the complex-valued algorithm can be further transformed into an equivalent real-valued algorithm Therefore, significant computation savings can be achieved. Also described here is the continuous-time RLS MGSO algorithms for the FB-GSC and the conjugate symmetric FB-GSC. Computer simulations of the FB-GSC and the forward-only GSC are presented