Fixed-time Disturbance Observer-Based Finite-Time Backstepping Control for Hypersonic Vehicle

Due to the severe flight environment, hypersonic vehicles are susceptible to external disturbances and aerodynamic parameter uncertainties, dramatically challenging the precise control and stable tracking. This paper presented a fixed-time disturbance observer (FTDO) to obtain better tracking performance for hypersonic vehicles. The FTDO can improve the tracking performance under external disturbances and aerodynamic parameter perturbations, whose observation time is bounded and does not depend on the initial errors. The backstepping control can guarantee finite-time convergence with the finite-time control technique. A second-order filter is designed to process the complexity explosion problem in the traditional backstepping control and ensure the tracking system's finite-time stability. Then with Lyapunov theory, it is proved that the control system is stable and convergent in finite time. Finally, three numerical simulation results based on typical conditions are given to show the effectiveness and advantage of the developed control scheme, and external disturbances can be estimated accurately within two seconds. These results have reference value for flight controller design of hypersonic and other aircraft in complex disturbance environments.