TIFF: Tokenized Incentive for Federated Learning

In this paper, the convergence time of federated learning (FL), when deployed over a realistic wireless network, is studied. In particular, a wireless network is considered in which wireless users transmit their local FL models (trained using their locally collected data) to a base station (BS). The BS, acting as a central controller, generates a global FL model using the received local FL models and broadcasts it back to all users. Due to the limited number of resource blocks (RBs) in a wireless network, only a subset of users can be selected to transmit their local FL model parameters to the BS at each learning step. Moreover, since each user has unique training data samples, the BS prefers to include all local user FL models to generate a converged global FL model. Hence, the FL training loss and convergence time will be significantly affected by the user selection scheme. Therefore, it is necessary to design an appropriate user selection scheme that can select the users who can contribute toward improving the FL convergence speed more frequently. This joint learning, wireless resource allocation, and user selection problem is formulated as an optimization problem whose goal is to minimize the FL convergence time and the FL training loss. To solve this problem, a probabilistic user selection scheme is proposed such that the BS is connected to the users whose local FL models have significant effects on the global FL model with high probabilities. Given the user selection policy, the uplink RB allocation can be determined. To further reduce the FL convergence time, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used to estimate the local FL models of the users that are not allocated any RBs for local FL model transmission at each given learning step, which enables the BS to improve the global model, the FL convergence speed, and the training loss. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can reduce the FL convergence time by up to 56% and improve the accuracy of identifying handwritten digits by up to 3%, compared to a standard FL algorithm.

Though federated learning (FL) well preserves clients’ data privacy, many clients are still reluctant to join FL given the communication cost and energy consumption in their mobile devices. It is important to design pricing compensations to motivate enough clients to join FL and distributively train the global model. Prior pricing mechanisms for FL are static and cannot adapt to clients’ random arrival pattern over time. We propose a new dynamic pricing solution in closed-form by constructing the Hamiltonian function to optimally balance the client recruitment time and the model training time, without knowing clients’ actual arrivals or training costs. During the client recruitment phase, we offer time-dependent monetary rewards per client arrival to trade off between the total payment and the FL model’s accuracy loss. Such reward gradually increases when we approach to the recruitment deadline or have greater data aging, and we also extend the deadline if the clients’ training time per iteration becomes shorter. Further, we extend to consider heterogeneous client types in training data size and training time per iteration. We successfully extend our dynamic pricing solution and develop an optimal algorithm of linear complexity to monotonically select client types for FL. Finally, we also show robustness of our solution against estimation error of clients’ data sizes, and run numerical experiments to validate our results.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be utilized as airborne base stations to deliver wireless communication and federated learning (FL) training services for ground vehicles. However, most existing studies assume that vehicles (clients) and UAVs (model owners) offer services voluntarily. In reality, participants (FL clients and model owners) are selfish and will not engage in training without compensation. Meanwhile, due to the heterogeneity of participants and the presence of free-riders and Byzantine behaviors, the quality of vehicles’ model updates can vary significantly. To incentivize participants to engage in model training and ensure reliable outcomes, this paper designs a reliable incentive mechanism (FedBeam) based on game theory. Specifically, we model the cooperation problem between model owners and clients as a two-layer Stackelberg game and prove the existence and uniqueness of the Stackelberg equilibrium (SE). For the cooperation among model owners, we formulate the problem as a coalition game and based on this, analyze and design a coalition formation algorithm to derive the Pareto optimal social utility. Additionally, to achieve reliable FL model updates, we design a weighted-beta (Wbeta) reputation update mechanism to incentivize FL clients to provide high-quality model updates. The experimental results show that compared to the baselines, the proposed incentive mechanism improves social welfare by 17.6% and test accuracy by 5.5% on simulated and real datasets, respectively.

Artificial intelligence has significantly enhanced disease diagnosis in healthcare, particularly through Deep Learning (DL) and Federated Learning (FL) approaches. These technologies have shown promise in detecting ocular diseases using medical imaging while addressing challenges related to data privacy and security. FL enables collaborative learning without sharing sensitive medical data, making it an attractive solution for healthcare applications. This systematic review aims to analyze the advancements in AI-driven ocular disease detection, with a particular focus on FL-based approaches. The article evaluates the evolution, methodologies, challenges, and effectiveness of FL in enhancing diagnostic accuracy while ensuring data confidentiality. The systematic review followed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) framework to ensure transparency and reliability. Research articles published between 2017 and 2024 were identified using academic databases, including Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and PubMed. Studies focusing on DL and FL models for detecting ocular diseases were selected based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. A comparative analysis of the methodologies, architectures, datasets, and performance metrics of different FL models has been presented. The findings indicated that FL preserves data privacy while achieving diagnostic performance comparable to traditional centralized AI models. Various FL models, including FedAvg and FedProx, have been implemented for ocular disease detection, with high accuracy and efficiency. However, challenges, such as data heterogeneity, communication efficiency, and model convergence, persist. FL represents a promising approach for ocular disease detection, balancing diagnostic accuracy with data privacy. Future research may focus on optimizing FL frameworks for improving scalability, communication efficiency, and integrating advanced privacy-preserving techniques.

Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a privacy-preserving distributed machine learning paradigm. To motivate data owners to contribute towards FL, research on FL incentive mechanisms is gaining great interest. Existing monetary incentive mechanisms generally share the same FL model with all participants regardless of their contributions. Such an assumption can be unfair towards participants who contributed more and promote undesirable free-riding, especially when the final model is of great utility value to participants. In this paper, we propose a Fairness-Aware Incentive Mechanism for federated learning (FedFAIM) to address such problem. It satisfies two types of fairness notion: 1) aggregation fairness, which determines aggregation results according to data quality; 2) reward fairness, which assigns each participant a unique model with performance reflecting his contribution. Aggregation fairness is achieved through efficient gradient aggregation which examines local gradient quality and aggregates them based on data quality. Reward fairness is achieved through an efficient Shapley value-based contribution assessment method and a novel reward allocation method based on reputation and distribution of local and global gradients. We further prove reward fairness is theoretically guaranteed. Extensive experiments show that FedFAIM provides stronger incentives than similar non-monetary FL incentive mechanisms while achieving a high level of fairness.

Secure extraction of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from Electronic Health Records (EHRs) presents significant privacy and security challenges. This study explores the application of Federated Learning (FL) to overcome these challenges within the context of French EHRs. By utilizing a multilingual BERT model in an FL simulation involving 20 hospitals, each represented by a unique medical department or pole, we compared the performance of two setups: individual models, where each hospital uses only its own training and validation data without engaging in the FL process, and federated models, where multiple hospitals collaborate to train a global FL model. Our findings demonstrate that FL models not only preserve data confidentiality but also outperform the individual models. In fact, the Global FL model achieved an F1 score of 75,7%, slightly comparable to that of the Centralized approach at 78,5%. This research underscores the potential of FL in extracting PIIs from EHRs, encouraging its broader adoption in health data analysis.

Federated learning (FL) enables the training of a shared collaborative machine learning model while keeping all the confidential training data on distributed devices. The FL state-of-the-art considers a monopolist FL task publisher. However, we present a FL marketplace where multiple FL task publishers and mobile devices co-exist for a set of diverse and varying learning tasks. Mobile devices participating in the training of FL models provides pay-as-you-go (i.e. using blockchain-based cryptocurrencies) FL training services to the FL task publishers. In the proposed framework, multiple FL task publishers may compete with each other and the participating workers (i.e. mobile devices) can choose one FL task publisher over another for participation in the training of a global model. We utilize code offloading for enabling customized FL pipelines in mobile devices and mitigating the model heterogeneity inherent in varying and changing FL tasks published by the task publishers. Experimental results indicate the efficacy of the proposed framework.

Federated Learning (FL) is a Machine Learning (ML) paradigm in which multiple devices collaboratively train a model without sharing their local data. This decentralized approach provides significant privacy benefits, enabling compliance with data protection regulations and safeguarding sensitive user information by keeping raw data on local devices. Instead of transmitting raw data, FL sends model updates to a central aggregator to improve the global model. However, this process can result in higher Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emissions compared to traditional centralized ML systems, due to the increased number of participating devices and communication rounds. This study evaluates the performance, convergence speed, energy efficiency, and environmental impact of FL models compared to centralized models, using the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology dataset (MNIST) and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research-10 classes dataset (CIFAR-10). Four models were tested: two FL models and two centralized models. The evaluation focused on accuracy, number of training rounds to convergence, and total CO₂ emissions. To optimize both convergence and energy efficiency, a dynamic hill-climbing-based early stopping technique was introduced. After every 100 rounds, model accuracy improvements were assessed, and training was terminated early if further gains fell below a shrinking threshold, effectively reducing unnecessary computation and energy consumption. Results show that, under the tested conditions, FL models achieved competitive or higher accuracy than centralized models, particularly on non-Independent and Identically Distributed (IID) data distributions. For example, the federated MNIST model reached 98.79% accuracy with a significantly lower carbon footprint when early stopping was applied. Overall, the proposed optimization approach reduced CO₂ emissions by approximately 60% without substantial loss in accuracy. By integrating privacy preservation, explicit regulatory relevance, and a practical dynamic optimization method, this research demonstrates that FL can deliver strong model performance while meeting modern requirements for data privacy and environmental sustainability

The development of accurate machine learning algorithms requires sufficient quantities of diverse data. This poses a challenge in health care because of the sensitive and siloed nature of biomedical information. Decentralized algorithms through federated learning (FL) avoid data aggregation by instead distributing algorithms to the data before centrally updating one global model. To establish a multicenter collaboration and assess the feasibility of using FL to train machine learning models for intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) detection without sharing data between sites. Five neurosurgery departments across the United States collaborated to establish a federated network and train a convolutional neural network to detect ICH on computed tomography scans. The global FL model was benchmarked against a standard, centrally trained model using a held-out data set and was compared against locally trained models using site data. A federated network of practicing neurosurgeon scientists was successfully initiated to train a model for predicting ICH. The FL model achieved an area under the ROC curve of 0.9487 (95% CI 0.9471-0.9503) when predicting all subtypes of ICH compared with a benchmark (non-FL) area under the ROC curve of 0.9753 (95% CI 0.9742-0.9764), although performance varied by subtype. The FL model consistently achieved top three performance when validated on any site's data, suggesting improved generalizability. A qualitative survey described the experience of participants in the federated network. This study demonstrates the feasibility of implementing a federated network for multi-institutional collaboration among clinicians and using FL to conduct machine learning research, thereby opening a new paradigm for neurosurgical collaboration.

Edge servers and mobile devices are often assigned a large number of computing tasks. However, the data involved in computing tasks is often sensitive in terms of privacy. Our initial proposal is a federated edge learning strategy based on real-world scenarios, which combines blurred data or pseudo shared data. Federated learning is used to train device models with the aim of protecting privacy while enabling mobile devices to more effectively utilize data for decision-making. In the case of limited energy on mobile devices, we propose a federated edge learning algorithm with blurred data sharing. This algorithm can generate more accurate models by uploading partially blurred data. In order to further improve model accuracy and protect privacy of mobile devices, we propose a federated edge learning algorithm with pseudo data sharing based on dataset distillation and generative adversarial networks (GANs) in scenarios with relatively sufficient energy. The experimental results on several traditional datasets show that our proposed algorithms outperform traditional algorithms in terms of accuracy and energy consumption.

Federated Learning (FL) is a promising form of distributed machine learning that preserves privacy by training models locally without sharing raw data. While FL ensures data privacy through collaborative learning, it faces several critical challenges. These include vulnerabilities to reverse engineering, risks to model architecture privacy, susceptibility to model poisoning attacks, threats to data integrity, and the high costs associated with communication and connectivity. This paper presents a comprehensive review of FL, categorizing data partitioning formats into horizontal federated learning, vertical federated learning, and federated transfer learning. Furthermore, it explores the integration of FL with blockchain, leveraging blockchain’s decentralized nature to enhance FL’s security, reliability, and performance. The study reviews existing FL models, identifying key challenges such as privacy risks, communication overhead, model poisoning vulnerabilities, and ethical dilemmas. It evaluates privacy-preserving mechanisms and security strategies in FL, particularly those enabled by blockchain, such as cryptographic methods, decentralized consensus protocols, and tamper-proof data logging. Additionally, the research analyzes regulatory and ethical considerations for adopting blockchain-based FL solutions. Key findings highlight the effectiveness of blockchain in addressing FL challenges, particularly in mitigating model poisoning, ensuring data integrity, and reducing communication costs. The paper concludes with future directions for integrating blockchain and FL, emphasizing areas such as interoperability, lightweight consensus mechanisms, and regulatory compliance.

WiFi sensing using channel state information (CSI) offers a device-free and nonintrusive method for human activity monitoring. However, the data-hungry and location-specific training process hinders its scalable deployment at large sizes. In this work, we propose <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">WiFederated</i> , a federated learning (FL) approach to train machine learning models for WiFi sensing tasks. Using WiFederated, client devices can not only perform training in parallel at the edge instead of sequentially at a central server but can also collaboratively learn and share generalizable location-independent traits about physical actions being monitored. We demonstrate that an FL model trained on as few as 2–3 locations can provide high prediction accuracy in new locations even without any data available from them. We also demonstrate how new locations can achieve higher prediction accuracy even with a small number of available samples when using the pretrained FL model rather than training from scratch. The results show that the FL model can save local training epochs and reduce the need for large data collection at each new location. Thus, the proposed WiFederated system scales as more locations are added. We show that WiFederated provides a more accurate and time-efficient solution compared to existing transfer learning and adversarial learning solutions thanks to the parallel training ability at multiple clients. By introducing new client selection methods during the FL process, we also show that accuracy can further increase. Finally, we evaluate the feasibility of training models at the edge and introduce continuous annotation to allow for continuous learning over time.

With the growth of participating clients, the centralized parameter server (PS) will seriously limit the scale and efficiency of Federated Learning (FL). A straightforward approach to scale up the FL system is to construct a Parallel FL (PFL) system with multiple parallel PSes. However, it is unclear whether PFL can really accelerate FL or reduce the training time of FL. Even if the answer is yes, it is non-trivial to design a highly efficient parameter average algorithm for a PFL system. In this paper, we propose a completely parallelizable FL algorithm called P-FedAvg under the PFL architecture. P-FedAvg extends the well-known FedAvg algorithm by allowing multiple PSes to cooperate and train a learning model together. In P-FedAvg, each PS is only responsible for a fraction of total clients, but PSes can mix model parameters in a dedicatedly designed way so that the FL model can well converge. Different from heuristic-based algorithms, P-FedAvg is with theoretical guarantees. To be rigorous, we theoretically analyze the convergence rate of P-FedAvg in terms of the number of conducted iterations, the communication cost of each global iteration and the optimal weights for each PS to mix parameters with its neighbors. Based on theoretical analysis, we conduct a case study on five typical overlay topolgoies formed by PSes to further examine the communication efficiency under different topologies, and investigate how the overlay topology affects the convergence rate, communication cost and robustness of a PFL system. Lastly, we perform extensive experiments with real datasets to verify our analysis and demonstrate that P-FedAvg can significantly speed up FL than traditional FedAvg and other competitive baselines. We believe that our work can help to lay a theoretical foundation for building more efficient PFL systems.

The trade-off between privacy and accuracy presents a challenge for current federated learning (FL) frameworks, hindering their progress from theory to application. The main issues with existing FL frameworks stem from a lack of interpretability and targeted privacy protections. To cope with these, we proposed Disentangled Federated Learning for Privacy (DFLP) which employes disentanglement, one of interpretability techniques, in private FL frameworks. Since sensitive properties are client-specific in nature, our main idea is to turn this feature into a tool that strikes the balance between data privacy and FL model performance, enabling the sensitive attributes to be private. DFLP disentangles the client-specific and class-invariant attributes to mask the sensitive attributes precisely. To our knowledge, this is the first work that successfully integrates disentanglement and the nature of sensitive attributes to achieve privacy protection while ensuring high FL model performance. Extensive experiments validate that disentanglement is an effective method for accuracy-aware privacy protection in FL frameworks.

Federated Learning (FL) is an effective framework for a distributed system that constructs a powerful global deep learning model, which diminishes the local bias and accommodates the successful aggregation of locally trained models with heterogeneous datasets. However, when local datasets have the non-IID attribute, the optimization metric tends to diverge or show unstable convergence in the trajectory space. This paper delves into building a global model for the distributed Smart Grid environment, with regionally cumulated three solar energy datasets from January 2017 to August 2021 in a decentralized power grid in South Korea via FL. This distributed energy network involves local properties and physical distance between the regions, which raises a fundamental question of “Will time-serially curated non-IID local features be effective in constructing a global regression model?”. This paper probes this question by leveraging FL and conducts the theoretically viable non-IID case-by-case convergence analysis, providing the interpretation of the embedded temporal non-IID features and application on real-world data. Moreover, most of the FL studies predetermine the global update period, which lacks applicability when adapting FL in actual practice. As FL is a cumulative-basis structure, the update term is a crucial factor that needs to be carefully selected. This paper articulates this problem and explores the effective update period via multiple experiments on the 4.5 years of solar energy dataset, and to the best of my knowledge, this is the first literature that presents the optimal update period in the FL regression in an energy domain.