It has always been a dream of communications engineers to be able to develop a wireless network that, while covering a wide area, would also have low propagation delay and little multipath fading. Recently, a new way for providing wireless communications services has emerged. Based on airships or aircraft positioned in the stratosphere at altitudes from 17 to 22 km, the technology is known as high altitude platforms (HAP) or stratospheric platforms (SPF). HAPs have most of the advantages of both terrestrial and satellite systems, while they avoid some of their drawbacks. The most important disadvantages of HAPs lie in the immature airship technology and the monitoring of the platform's movement. The article discusses the types of airships or aircraft that may be used, spectrum allocation, network design, rain attenuation, interference, antenna system design and potential applications. In spite of their outstanding features, several factors have so far hampered the deployment of HAP systems. Convincible demonstrations of their usefulness are necessary, as well as further development in antenna, airship and unmanned aircraft technologies.


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