Stratospheric airship flight trajectory envelope prediction based on wind field uncertainty model

Stratospheric airships, as typical low-speed near space aircraft, exhibit great potential in the fields of communication relay and high-altitude monitoring. However, due to the considerable uncertainty of the external wind field environment, the deviation of stratospheric airship flight trajectory increases. To effectively predict the envelope of stratospheric airship flight trajectory, this paper proposes an innovative trajectory envelope prediction method to offer a new perspective on related research. By establishing wind field uncertainty model including both wind speed uncertainty and wind direction uncertainty, stratospheric airship trajectories are obtained under four extreme wind fields, and the trajectory envelope is generated using the Alpha-Shape method. Furthermore, the adaptive bandwidth kernel density estimation method is introduced to quantify the trajectory distribution probability, providing an intuitive description of the trajectory distribution probability. The simulation results show that the proposed methods can effectively predict the stratospheric airship flight trajectory envelope and describe trajectory distribution characteristics, supporting mission planning, risk assessment, and energy-management strategy selection for stratospheric airship flight tests.