1. An autonomous vehicle (AV) comprising: a communication system to communicate with a backend system; a sensor system to collect sensor data representing an operational environment of the AV; an acceleration, braking, and steering system; and a control system to execute an instruction set, causing the control system to: process the sensor data to (i) perform a localization operation to determine a location and an orientation of the AV within a given region, and (ii) autonomously operate the acceleration, braking, and steering system throughout the given region; based on the localization operation, implement a set of configuration commands to configure the communication system to transmit and receive data with the backend system using a number of specified network nodes.