Novel Applications of High Altitude Stratospheric Platforms for Traffic Management and Control

Abstract: This paper provides some novel applications of High Altitude Stratospheric Platforms (HASP) for traffic monitoring and management systems. A flying HASP in the stratosphere can provide large area coverage with improved communication performance and is candidate for many applications and scenarios such as flood monitoring, highway traffic monitoring and control, accurate localization of remote accidents, tracking of dangerous wanted vehicles and detection of road faults and floods. The system architecture of HASP for traffic management and control is demonstrated with the proposed applications showing the new provided capabilities and advantages such as localization of vehicles, long endurance operation, controlling of traffic lights over wide area by a single HASP, and efficient traffic data collection. Keywords: High Altitude Stratospheric Platforms, Traffic Management, Flood Detection, Vehicle Tracking