Dynamic coverage performance of wind-assisted balloons mesh based on Voronoi partition and energy constraint

Efficiently navigating a fleet of several thousand high-altitude balloons to provide communication network and information system to the entire Earth is a promising technology. Here we proposed the use of balloons with altitude control system to coverage the entire Earth by exploiting the natural time-varying wind field. The energy constraints are deduced based on the energy collecting-consuming model and the energy management strategy of the wind-assisted balloon. The Voronoi partition is introduced to optimize the configuration. Then a dynamic coverage algorithm for multi-balloons system is developed. Three schemes of 1500 balloons in two launch sites are simulated to show the effectiveness of the algorithm. The results demonstrate that Voronoi partition with energy constraints is an effective solution to spread the wind-assisted balloons out over the entire Earth within a short time and then maintain the optimal dynamic coverage configuration for quite a long time. This can serve as a guideline for the design and flight test of the serviceable wind-assisted balloons coverage mesh.