Design, modeling and control for a stratospheric telecommunication platform

The stratospheric airship provides a unique and promising platform for broad band telecommunication relay missions, which combine the advantages of both terrestrial and satellite communication. In this paper, the conceptual design, dynamics modeling and attitude control of the stratospheric telecommunication platform are presented. First, the stratospheric telecommunication platform is introduced, including conceptual design, configuration, energy sources, propeller and payload. Second, dynamics model of the platform is derived form the Newton–Euler formulation and the station-keeping attitude control problem is formulated. Then, the adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control scheme is proposed to develop the attitude-tracking control system, with a particular focus on parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control scheme. The proposed conceptual design and control scheme provide a promising approach for telecommunication relay missions using the stratospheric station-keeping airship.

► We proposed the conceptual design for telecommunication relay missions using stratospheric airship platforms.
► We derived the dynamics model of the platform form the Newton–Euler formulation.
► We proposed an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control scheme to develop the attitude control system of the platform.