Design and Characterization of a Power Management System for a Pico Balloon Platform for High Altitude Radiation Monitoring

Abstract

Research related to the Earth's atmosphere is increasing due to its importance in various fields. These studies are directly related to environmental changes and health problems. This occurs mainly in environments where the magnetic field is strongly weakened, such as the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), located in South America. As a result, studies have been conducted to monitor radiation in these locations, such as the Minuano project. Based on it, the goal of this work is to design and implement a power management system (PMS) for a high-altitude pico balloon. It must provide a minimum power of 281.78 mW to power the electronic components of the pico-balloon tracker system. We present the overall methodology for the system design and development of the PMS. Different types of DC-DC converters and different photovoltaic (PV) cell arrays have been characterized. The PMS proposed in this paper can provide a power of 284.6 mW for a parallel association of 2 arrays of 5 PV cells in series.