Resource-Efficient Federated Learning for Heterogenous and Resource-Constrained Environments

Humaid Desai, Hoda Eldardiry

Abstract

Federated Learning (FL) is a privacy-enforcing sub-domain of machine learning that brings the model to the user's device for training, avoiding the need to share personal data with a central server. While existing works address data heterogeneity, they overlook other challenges in FL, such as device heterogeneity and communication efficiency. In this paper, we propose RE-FL, a novel approach that tackles computational and communication challenges in resource-constrained devices. Our variable pruning technique optimizes resource utilization by adapting pruning to each client's computational capabilities. We also employ knowledge distillation to reduce bandwidth consumption and communication rounds. Experimental results on image classification tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in resource-constrained environments, maintaining data privacy and performance while accommodating heterogeneous model architectures.