Abstract
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.