Stratospheric balloon tracking system design through software defined radio applications: STRAINS experiment

The new concept aerospace mission profiles, such as stratospheric airships or suborbital vehicles, impose new requirements for the tracking and surveillance systems, with particular regards to manned missions. New technologies and innovative tracking systems can be supporting such operations. The STRAINS (Stratospheric Tracking Innovative Systems) Experiment, conceived by Sapienza University of Rome and ALTEC (Aerospace Logistics Technology Engineering Company) and supported by ASI (Italian Space Agency), to be launched in Q3/Q4 2021, is aiming at demonstrating TDOA (Time Difference of Arrival), FDOA (Frequency Difference of Arrival) and single station tracking for a Zero-Pressure Balloon Flight in the framework of the HEMERA H2020 balloon launch infrastructure. This paper describes the design of the STRAINS stratospheric experiment, including the stratospheric and the ground segment, the analyses carried out for optimizing the experiment functionalities, the mission analysis for defining the multi-lateration stations locations and the performance evaluation for the designed TDOA tracking system.