  We design and build SKYHAUL, the first large-scale, autonomous,
self-organizing network of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that are connected
using a mmWave wireless mesh backhaul. While the use of a mmWave backhaul paves
the way for a new class of bandwidth-intensive, latency-sensitive cooperative
applications (e.g., LTE coverage during disasters, surveillance during rescue
in challenging terrains), the network of UAVs allows these applications to be
executed at operating ranges that are far beyond the line-of-sight distances
that limit individual UAVs today. To realize the challenging vision of
deploying and maintaining an airborne mmWave mesh backhaul to cater to dynamic
applications, SKYHAUL's design incorporates various elements: (1) Role-specific
UAV operations that simultaneously address application tracking and backhaul
connectivity (2) Novel algorithms to jointly address the problem of deployment
(position, yaw of UAVs) and traffic routing across the UAV network; and (3) A
provably optimal solution for fast and safe reconfiguration of UAV backhaul
during application dynamics. We implement SKYHAUL on four DJI Matrice 600 Pros
to demonstrate its practicality and performance through autonomous flight
operations, complemented by large scale simulations.
