Ricerc@Sapienza

4rNRdweH The future rise of stratospheric and suborbital aviation shall consider the introduction of innovative surveillance and navigation systems for optimizing integration with the conventional civil aviation flights, while maintaining adequate safety rates of all the planned operations. Currently, commercial and civil aviation vehicles surveillance relies on active systems, i.e. radars, while data fusion among inertial, satellite and radio-based systems is exploited for navigation purposes.

The aim of the experiment "Tracking and Attitude Radio-based Determination In Stratosphere" (TARDIS) is to develop an alternative navigation system based on digital processing of the VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR) radio-navigation system signal. The radio-navigation systems signal processing can provide a position and attitude estimation for stratospheric vehicles, incrementing the reliability of navigation systems. The TARDIS experiment will be performed on a stratospheric balloon in October 2019.

This paper presents the results of STRATONAV experiment to test the precision of the VOR (VHF Omni Range) aircraft navigation system in stratosphere. The experiment has been conducted by the S5Lab research group at Sapienza University of Rome in the framework of the REXUS/BEXUS Programme. STRATONAV has been successfully launched on-board the BEXUS 22 stratospheric balloon from Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, in 2016.