Adaptive Retransmission Design for Wireless Federated Edge Learning

Abstract: As a popular distributed machine learning framework, wireless federated edge learning (FEEL) can keep original data local, while uploading model training updates to protect privacy and prevent data silos. However, since wireless channels are usually unreliable, there is no guarantee that the model updates uploaded by local devices are correct, thus greatly degrading the performance of the wireless FEEL. Con⁃ ventional retransmission schemes designed for wireless systems generally aim to maximize the system throughput or minimize the packet error rate, which is not suitable for the FEEL system. A novel retransmission scheme is proposed for the FEEL system to make a tradeoff between model training accuracy and retransmission latency. In the proposed scheme, a retransmission device selection criterion is first designed based on the channel condition, the number of local data, and the importance of model updates. In addition, we design the air interface signal⁃ ing under this retransmission scheme to facilitate the implementation of the proposed scheme in practical scenarios. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed retransmission scheme is validated through simulation experiments.

Keywords: federated edge learning; retransmission; unreliable communication; convergence rate; retransmission latency