Analysis of rendezvous guidance laws for autonomous aerial refueling for non-maneuvering and identical speed targets

This study analyzes rendezvous guidance schemes for UAVs refueling. Assuming the target is non-maneuvering with identical speed, a necessary condition is investigated for the UAV to approach the rendezvous point. Three types of guidance laws are considered to analyze the performance under the condition. A reachable region is analytically obtained using the closed-form solution of the deviated pursuit and pure proportional navigation. Numerical simulation demonstrates the analyzed result for the rendezvous mission.