Standard sparse table uses space. Can we do better? For problems where is large but queries need only a few levels, you can:
Compute on-demand: Only compute levels you need. For small ranges, level 0-3 might suffice.
Block decomposition + Sparse Table: Divide array into blocks. Build sparse table only on block representatives.
Fischer-Heun structure: space, query for RMQ (theoretically optimal but complex). For most competitive programming, the space is acceptable. These optimizations are for extreme cases.