Resource-Aware Heterogeneous Federated Learning using Neural Architecture Search

Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) is extensively used to train AI/ML models in distributed and privacy-preserving settings. Participant edge devices in FL systems typically contain non-independent and identically distributed (Non-IID) private data and unevenly distributed computational resources. Preserving user data privacy while optimizing AI/ML models in a heterogeneous federated network requires us to address data and system/resource heterogeneity. To address these challenges, we propose Resource-aware Federated Learning (RaFL). RaFL allocates resource-aware specialized models to edge devices using Neural Architecture Search (NAS) and allows heterogeneous model architecture deployment by knowledge extraction and fusion. Combining NAS and FL enables on-demand customized model deployment for resource-diverse edge devices. Furthermore, we propose a multi-model architecture fusion scheme allowing the aggregation of the distributed learning results. Results demonstrate RaFL's superior resource efficiency compared to SoTA.