Variable-horizon predictive tracking control for air-breathing hypersonic vehicle based on composite disturbance observer

In this paper, a variable-horizon predictive tracking control (VHPTC) scheme based on composite disturbance observer (CDO) is proposed to investigate the attitude tracking problem for an air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (AHV) subject to external matched and mismatched disturbances. An explicit predictive tracking control term with the variable horizon is employed to reduce the online computation and improve the control performance of the AHV system. To comprehensively suppress the negative influences caused by the matched and mismatched disturbances, a CDO is constructed to estimate the unknown disturbances. Moreover, to further guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system affected by the resulting disturbance estimation error, the auxiliary control term is presented. Combining the predictive tracking control term with the variable horizon, the auxiliary control term, and the disturbance compensation control term obtained by CDO, the entire VHPTC law for the AHV system is obtained. Through the Lyapunov analysis, the rigorously exponential stability of the closed-loop system is ensured by the proposed CDO-based VHPTC scheme. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented strategy for the AHV attitude system.