Maneuver by Airstreams for Stratospheric Balloon Base Stations

Realizing sustainable aerial networks in current technologies has been considered infeasible due to physical limitations in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This paper introduces a brand-new aerial vehicle, stratospheric balloon base station (SBBS), which might be a breakthrough in aerial networks. SBBSs maneuver using buoyancy from the balloon, and equip solar panels to source the energy. Real implementation has shown that such configurations can prolong the flight time up to almost one year. However, the movements of SBBSs are stochastic as their maneuver solely relies on the airstreams. We adopt a deep Q-network (DQN) model to adaptively control the SBBSs for a given airstream pattern. The experiment reveals that sufficient controllability can be obtained when the air direction is diverse enough along the altitude. We also introduce challenges of SBBS networks that occur from the unique control characteristic of the SBBS. We believe that SBBSs can make our society connected more ubiquitously by realizing sustainable aerial networks.