GNSS Based Attitude Determination Systems for High Altitude Platforms

Abstract

High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) are a new, promising means of providing innovative wireless services. HAPs can be successfully applied for mobile or broadband communications and for disaster monitoring or response. One of the open issues is whether HAP stations can provide reliable services without temporal outages due to stratospheric winds that can cause an inclination of the platforms. As a possible solution in this paper it is proposed the use of a GNSS based attitude determination system. This technique, which has been successfully applied for both aircrafts and spacecrafts can provide real time three axis attitude data using the GNSS receiver present onboard the platform. In particular, it will be shown how the usage of a particular class of low multipath and lightweight antennas can provide high accuracy without altering the avionic ballast.