High-Altitude Platforms Beyond Connectivity: A Survey of Integrated Sensing, Storage, Communication, Computing, and Intelligence

Abstract

High-altitude platforms (HAPs) are emerging as persistent middle-layer infrastructures for space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs), offering a favorable compromise among coverage, latency, endurance, and deployment flexibility. Their role, however, is evolving beyond communication relaying toward the joint provision of sensing, storage, communication, computing, and intelligence (S^2C^2I). This survey presents a unified HAP-centric perspective on S^2C^2I integration. We first review HAP fundamentals, platform categories, and their principal roles in SAGINs, including wide-area access, relaying, backhaul, edge service, low-altitude aerial coordination, and cross-layer orchestration. We then develop an integrated architecture spanning multi-plane connectivity, payload functional splits, and a cloud-edge-HAP space continuum with hierarchical data, control, computing, and storage loops. The enabling technologies are systematically examined, covering heterogeneous RF, millimeter-wave, terahertz, free-space optical, and hybrid links; sensing payloads and integrated sensing and communication; onboard computing; storage and caching; and AI-based orchestration. We further synthesize standardization progress, open software and datasets, testbeds, field evidence, and a four-level evaluation methodology ranging from component validation to mission-level effectiveness. An emergency-response case study demonstrates that joint S^2C^2I orchestration substantially improves conjunctive service availability while reducing feeder-link traffic. Finally, we identify research opportunities in agentic AI, trustworthy autonomy, goal-oriented semantic operation and digital twins, and sustainable, certifiable, and open HAP-native systems. The resulting synthesis provides a coherent roadmap from platform design to network-wide deployment.