Disturbance observer-based backstepping control for hypersonic flight vehicles without use of measured flight path angle

In this paper a nonlinear control method is proposed for the tracking control of hypersonic flight vehicles. The designed control laws do not utilize the measured flight path angle due to its inferior accuracy in practical engineering. For this, an estimated flight path angle is designed via the measurements of the altitude and velocity. A tracking differentiator is designed for constructing nonlinear disturbance observer which is used to estimate the model uncertainties including the parameter indeterminacies and external disturbances in the channels of velocity and pitch rate. A robust high-order differentiator is introduced to avoid the employment of the measured flight path angle and estimate the lumped disturbance in dynamics of flight path angle. Meanwhile, the possible saturation of the control inputs is considered and compensated by the auxiliary states. The boundness of closed-loop signals is proved through the Lyapunov theory. Comparative simulations are carried out and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.