Given the unprecedented availability of data and computing resources, there is widespread renewed interest in applying data-driven machine learning methods to problems for which the development of conventional engineering solutions is challenged by modeling or algorithmic deficiencies. This tutorial-style paper starts by addressing the questions of why and when such techniques can be useful. It then provides a high-level introduction to the basics of supervised and unsupervised learning. For both supervised and unsupervised learning, exemplifying applications to communication networks are discussed by distinguishing tasks carried out at the edge and at the cloud segments of the network at different layers of the protocol stack, with an emphasis on the physical layer.

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A Very Brief Introduction to Machine Learning With Applications to Communication Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT) is penetrating many facets of our daily life with the proliferation of intelligent services and applications empowered by artificial intelligence (AI). Traditionally, AI techniques require centralized data collection and processing that may not be feasible in realistic application scenarios due to the high scalability of modern IoT networks and growing data privacy concerns. Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a distributed collaborative AI approach that can enable many intelligent IoT applications, by allowing for AI training at distributed IoT devices without the need for data sharing. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey of the emerging applications of FL in IoT networks, beginning from an introduction to the recent advances in FL and IoT to a discussion of their integration. Particularly, we explore and analyze the potential of FL for enabling a wide range of IoT services, including IoT data sharing, data offloading and caching, attack detection, localization, mobile crowdsensing, and IoT privacy and security. We then provide an extensive survey of the use of FL in various key IoT applications such as smart healthcare, smart transportation, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), smart cities, and smart industry. The important lessons learned from this review of the FL-IoT services and applications are also highlighted. We complete this survey by highlighting the current challenges and possible directions for future research in this booming area.

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Federated Learning for Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Survey

Federated learning (FL) is a rapidly growing research field in machine learning. However, existing FL libraries cannot adequately support diverse algorithmic development; inconsistent dataset and model usage make fair algorithm comparison challenging. In this work, we introduce FedML, an open research library and benchmark to facilitate FL algorithm development and fair performance comparison. FedML supports three computing paradigms: on-device training for edge devices, distributed computing, and single-machine simulation. FedML also promotes diverse algorithmic research with flexible and generic API design and comprehensive reference baseline implementations (optimizer, models, and datasets). We hope FedML could provide an efficient and reproducible means for developing and evaluating FL algorithms that would benefit the FL research community. We maintain the source code, documents, and user community at this https URL.

FedML: A Research Library and Benchmark for Federated Machine Learning

Given the unprecedented availability of data and computing resources, there is widespread renewed interest in applying data-driven machine learning methods to problems for which the development of conventional engineering solutions is challenged by modelling or algorithmic deficiencies. This tutorial-style paper starts by addressing the questions of why and when such techniques can be useful. It then provides a high-level introduction to the basics of supervised and unsupervised learning. For both supervised and unsupervised learning, exemplifying applications to communication networks are discussed by distinguishing tasks carried out at the edge and at the cloud segments of the network at different layers of the protocol stack.

This study develops a federated learning (FL) framework overcoming largely incremental communication costs due to model sizes in typical frameworks without compromising model performance To this end, based on the idea of leveraging an unlabeled open dataset, we propose a distillation-based semi-supervised FL (DS-FL) algorithm that exchanges the outputs of local models among mobile devices, instead of model parameter exchange employed by the typical frameworks In DS-FL, the communication cost depends only on the output dimensions of the models and does not scale up according to the model size The exchanged model outputs are used to label each sample of the open dataset, which creates an additionally labeled dataset Based on the new dataset, local models are further trained, and model performance is enhanced owing to the data augmentation effect We further highlight that in DS-FL, the heterogeneity of the devices dataset leads to ambiguous of each data sample and lowing of the training convergence To prevent this, we propose entropy reduction averaging, where the aggregated model outputs are intentionally sharpened Moreover, extensive experiments show that DS-FL reduces communication costs up to 99% relative to those of the FL benchmark while achieving similar or higher classification accuracy

Distillation-Based Semi-Supervised Federated Learning for Communication-Efficient Collaborative Training with Non-IID Private Data

This study demonstrates the feasibility of proactive received power prediction by leveraging spatiotemporal visual sensing information towards reliable millimeter-wave (mmWave) networks. As the received power on a mmWave link can attenuate aperiodically owing to human blockages, a long-term series of the future received power cannot be predicted by analyzing the received signals prior to the blockage occurring. We propose a novel mechanism that predicts the time series of received power from the next moment to as many as several hundred milliseconds ahead. The key idea is to leverage camera imagery and machine learning (ML). Time-sequential images may involve the spatial geometry and mobility of obstacles representing mmWave signal propagation. ML is used to construct a prediction model from a dataset of sequential images labeled with received power in several hundred milliseconds ahead of the time at which each image is obtained. The simulation and experimental evaluations conducted using IEEE 802.11ad devices and a depth camera demonstrated that the proposed mechanism employing convolutional long short-term memory predicted a time series of received power up to 500 ms ahead, with an inference time of less than 3 ms and a root-mean-square error of 3.4 dB.

Proactive Received Power Prediction Using Machine Learning and Depth Images for mmWave Networks

For millimeter-wave networks, this paper presents a paradigm shift for leveraging time-consecutive camera images in handover decision problems. While making handover decisions, it is important to predict future long-term performance—e.g., the cumulative sum of time-varying data rates—proactively to avoid making myopic decisions. However, this study experimentally notices that a time-variation in the received powers is not necessarily informative for proactively predicting the rapid degradation of data rates caused by moving obstacles. To overcome this challenge, this study proposes a proactive framework wherein handover timings are optimized while obstacle-caused data rate degradations are predicted before the degradations occur. The key idea is to expand a state space to involve time-consecutive camera images, which comprises informative features for predicting such data rate degradations. To overcome the difficulty in handling the large dimensionality of the expanded state space, we use a deep reinforcement learning for deciding the handover timings. The evaluations performed based on the experimentally obtained camera images and received powers demonstrate that the expanded state space facilitates (i) the prediction of obstacle-caused data rate degradations from 500 ms before the degradations occur and (ii) superior performance to a handover framework without the state space expansion.

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Handover Management for mmWave Networks With Proactive Performance Prediction Using Camera Images and Deep Reinforcement Learning

This paper discusses the optimal decision-making for predictive handover in millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication networks using information of pedestrian movement. In mmWave communication networks, human blockage causes significant performance degradation. Hence, to maximize the throughput, it might be important to perform a handover predictively using information such as location and velocity of a pedestrian. To optimize the timing to perform the predictive handover, this paper presents a reinforcement learning framework. The important point in this framework is learning the optimal handover policy maximizing the future throughput expected under the locations and velocities of a pedestrian. To learn the optimal policy, this paper applies Q-learning. The numerical results demonstrate that the learned handover decisions outperform the heuristic handover decisions in terms of throughput performance.

Reinforcement learning based predictive handover for pedestrian-aware mmWave networks

Over-the-air computation (AirComp)-based federated learning (FL) enables low-latency uploads and the aggregation of machine learning models by exploiting simultaneous co-channel transmission and the resultant waveform superposition. This study aims at realizing secure AirComp-based FL against various privacy attacks where malicious central servers infer clients’ private data from aggregated global models. To this end, a differentially private AirComp-based FL is designed in this study, where the key idea is to harness receiver noise perturbation injected to aggregated global models inherently, thereby preventing the inference of clients’ private data. However, the variance of the inherent receiver noise is often uncontrollable, which renders the process of injecting an appropriate noise perturbation to achieve a desired privacy level quite challenging. Hence, this study designs transmit power control across clients, wherein the received signal level is adjusted intentionally to control the noise perturbation levels effectively, thereby achieving the desired privacy level. It is observed that a higher privacy level requires lower transmit power, which indicates the tradeoff between the privacy level and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To understand this tradeoff more fully, the closed-form expressions of SNR (with respect to the privacy level) are derived, and the tradeoff is analytically demonstrated. The analytical results also demonstrate that among the configurable parameters, the number of participating clients is a key parameter that enhances the received SNR under the aforementioned tradeoff. The analytical results are validated through numerical evaluations.

Yusuke Koda

Papers

Distillation-Based Semi-Supervised Federated Learning for Communication-Efficient Collaborative Training with Non-IID Private Data

Proactive Received Power Prediction Using Machine Learning and Depth Images for mmWave Networks

Handover Management for mmWave Networks With Proactive Performance Prediction Using Camera Images and Deep Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning based predictive handover for pedestrian-aware mmWave networks

Differentially Private AirComp Federated Learning with Power Adaptation Harnessing Receiver Noise