Altitude control of a remote-sensing balloon platform

This paper addresses the problem of altitude control of stratospheric balloon platforms. Over the last years, there has been an increasing interest in the development of balloon platforms with the ability of maneuvering and fluctuating at the stratosphere for different applications on the basis of remote-sensing. Considering the current trend of a high connected world with sensor grids spread in wide geographical areas, the interest in balloon platform applications has increased posing new challenges for future applications. One of the major problems encountered in this context is how to guarantee constant altitude sustainability. Although the technologies required to address this problem already exist, low cost and easy to launch solutions are still needed considering applications on a wide scale. In this work, a theoretical model of the balloon dynamic is presented and validated. A valve control loop mechanism is proposed for rubber balloons. The controller is tuned empirically and numerical simulations conducted for performance analysis and a case study in a real mission. The proposed solution contributes to increase the capacity of rubber balloons by proposing an altitude control system that allows fluctuation stages which, in general, are not common with this type of balloon.