Energy Efficient Collaborative Federated Learning Design: A Graph Neural Network based Approach

In this paper, we consider the design of an energy efficient collaborative federated learning (CFL) methodology where devices exchange their local FL parameters with a subset of their neighbors without reliance on a parameter server. In the considered model, mobile devices implement the designed CFL to train their local FL models using their own datasets over a realistic wireless network. Due to the limited wireless resources and user movements, each device may not be able to transmit its FL parameters with all neighboring devices. Therefore, each device must select a subset of devices to share its FL parameters and optimize the transmit power. This problem is formulated as an optimization problem, whose goal is to minimize CFL training energy consumption while satisfying the delay and CFL training loss requirements. To solve this problem, a two-stage solution is proposed. At the first stage, a graph neural network (GNN) based algorithm is proposed, which enables each device to individually determine the subset of devices to transmit FL parameters using its neighboring devices' location and connection information. Compared to standard iterative algorithms that need to iteratively optimize device connections and transmit power, the proposed GNN based method can directly obtain the optimal device connections without iterative optimization. Given the optimal device connections, at the second stage, each device can directly obtain the optimal transmit power. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can decrease energy consumption by up to 46% compared to the algorithm where each device will directly connect to its first and second nearest neighbors.