Abstract

This paper studies a novel network or topology construction problem using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Unlike prior works, it aims to construct a topology that {\em jointly} optimizes communications between ground users operating in an industrial Internet of things (IIoT) network as well as provide localization services to users. It first outlines a mixed integer linear program (MILP) that maximizes the minimum flow-rate of ground users subject to localization accuracy. Its key decision variables relate to (i) the position of UAVs, (ii) routing of traffic between users, and (iii) link schedule. It then presents a heuristic called localization-aware UAV deployment and communication-aware relay deployment (LAUD-CARD) to position UAVs. The results show that LAUD-CARD is able to achieve 90\% of the optimal or MILP result.