Data Center-Enabled High Altitude Platforms: A Green Computing Alternative

TL;DR

This paper proposes a data center-enabled High Altitude Platform system as a sustainable, energy-efficient alternative to traditional terrestrial data centers, capable of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel HAP-based data center system and provides an analytical assessment of its energy benefits and communication requirements.

Findings

HAP data centers can save up to 14% energy compared to terrestrial data centers.

The system leverages low stratospheric temperatures and solar energy harvesting.

It addresses offloading outages and reduces delays in data processing.

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.