Enhanced cube implementation for highly stratified population

A balanced sampling design should always be the adopted strategy if auxiliary information is available. In addition, integrating a stratified structure of the population in the sampling process can considerably reduce the variance of the estimators. We propose here a new method to handle the selection of a balanced sample in a highly stratified population. The method improves substantially the commonly used sampling designs and reduces the time-consuming problem that could arise if inclusion probabilities within strata do not sum to an integer.