Aerostat communication design

In this paper, we describe the current stage of our design for a large-scale aerostat communication system and the future developments we anticipate. Aerostats provide many benefits that are not offered by other means. To take full advantage of these benefits, data must be streamed to a ground station at a very high rate. We have proposed a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system with a phased array at the receiving end to fulfill this requirement. The phased array uses beam-forming to allow for individual transmitting elements to be resolved. Our current design and results are given, along with an analysis. In addition, we describe a scaled test-bed we have planned using Wireless Open-Access Research Platforms (WARP) from Rice University.