2510 Q. Zhao et al.
defense system (i.e., T
2
). Without loss of generality,
suppose that the task assignment has been completed.
Subgroups M
1
and M
2
are expected to attack targets
T
1
and T
2
, respectively. To saturate the defenses and
increase the kill probability, T
2
should first be destroyed
by subgroup M
2
, and then subgroup M
1
attacks T
1
.
Subgroups M
1
and M
2
work in coordination through
local inter-subgroup communications (i.e., information
exchange between different subgroups). In each sub-
group, multiple missiles synchronize the impact time
via local intra-subgroup communications (i.e., infor-
mation exchange within each subgroup). Thus, the
group cooperative attack can be achieved by the whole
multi-missile system.
Remark 1 In contrast to traditional cooperative guid-
ance, in which multiple missiles attack one single target
[12–25], the group cooperative guidance is employed
to intercept multiple targets. In addition, information is
exchanged not only within the same subgroup but also
between different subgroups. If there exist only one
subgroup and one target, then the group cooperative
guidance in the current paper becomes the traditional
one. Therefore, the group cooperative guidance prob-
lem can be treated as an extension of the traditional one
and has more generality.
The following assumptions are standard in studying
group behavior.
Assumption 1 ([30–34]) For all m
i
/∈ M
p
( p ∈
{1, 2,...,s}),
∀m
j
∈M
p
w
ij
= 0.
Assumption 2 ([32,33]) {M
1
, M
2
,...,M
s
} is an
acyclic partition of the missile set M.
Remark 2 Assumption 1 means that the inter-subgroup
communication among different subgroups is either
positively or negatively weighted, as was pointed
out in [31]. The underlying physical meaning of the
inter-subgroup communications which are positively
and negatively weighted is explained as follows: On
the one hand, the positively weighted information
exchange can be viewed as the cooperative effects
among multiple subgroups. On the other hand, the neg-
atively weighted information exchange can be func-
tioned as the asynchronous effects among multiple
subgroups. The cooperative effects and asynchronous
effects ensure that all the subgroups work as a whole
Fig. 2 Guidance geometry of m
i
while attacking the distinct targets. Assumption 1 is
commonly used in investigating the group behavior
problems [30–34].
Remark 3 Assumption 2 means that there exist no
cycles among multiple subgroups. By taking each sub-
group as a node, the information flow among multiple
subgroups can be described by a directed graph with on
cycles. In other words, the communication structure for
multiple subgroups is a leader-following one. This kind
of communication structure is easy for application, as
was mentioned in [35,36].
Lemma 1 ([33]) Based on Assumptions 1 and 2, each
subgroup M
p
contains a spanning tree if and only if
Laplacian matrix L has s simple zero eigenvalues (i.e.,
L has a zero eigenvalue whose algebraic and geometric
multiplicity are both s), and the real part of all the other
(N − s) eigenvalues are positive.
2.2 Problem description
In engineering practice, the trajectory of a missile is
decomposed into motion on lateral and longitudinal
planes. This paper focuses on the lateral plane. The
following is a standard assumption when considering
cooperative guidance problems of multiple missiles
(see, e.g., [13,15,18,19,21–23,26]).
Assumption 3 (i) Both the missiles and the targets are
treated as mass points on the planar surface. (ii) Com-
pared with the guidance loop, the seeker and autopilot
dynamics of missiles are sufficiently fast. (iii) The axis
velocity of each missile is a constant.
The homing guidance geometry is depicted in Fig. 2.
Let m
i
(i ∈{1, 2,...,N }) denote the ith missile and
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