  Information technology organizations and companies are seeking greener
alternatives to traditional terrestrial data centers to mitigate global warming
and reduce carbon emissions. Currently, terrestrial data centers consume a
significant amount of energy, estimated at about 1.5% of worldwide electricity
use. Furthermore, the increasing demand for data-intensive applications is
expected to raise energy consumption, making it crucial to consider sustainable
computing paradigms. In this study, we propose a data center-enabled High
Altitude Platform (HAP) system, where a flying data center supports the
operation of terrestrial data centers. We conduct a detailed analytical study
to assess the energy benefits and communication requirements of this approach.
Our findings demonstrate that a data center-enabled HAP is more
energy-efficient than a traditional terrestrial data center, owing to the
naturally low temperature in the stratosphere and the ability to harvest solar
energy. Adopting a data center-HAP can save up to 14% of energy requirements
while overcoming the offloading outage problem and the associated delay
resulting from server distribution. Our study highlights the potential of a
data center-enabled HAP system as a sustainable computing solution to meet the
growing energy demands and reduce carbon footprint.
