On-Demand Model and Client Deployment in Federated Learning with Deep Reinforcement Learning

In Federated Learning (FL), the limited accessibility of data from diverse locations and user types poses a significant challenge due to restricted user participation. Expanding client access and diversifying data enhance models by incorporating diverse perspectives, thereby enhancing adaptability. However, challenges arise in dynamic and mobile environments where certain devices may become inaccessible as FL clients, impacting data availability and client selection methods. To address this, we propose an On-Demand solution, deploying new clients using Docker Containers on-the-fly. Our On-Demand solution, employing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), targets client availability and selection, while considering data shifts, and container deployment complexities. It employs an autonomous end-to-end solution for handling model deployment and client selection. The DRL strategy uses a Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework, with a Master Learner and a Joiner Learner. The designed cost functions represent the complexity of the dynamic client deployment and selection. Simulated tests show that our architecture can easily adjust to changes in the environment and respond to On-Demand requests. This underscores its ability to improve client availability, capability, accuracy, and learning efficiency, surpassing heuristic and tabular reinforcement learning solutions.

CRSFL: Cluster-based Resource-aware Split Federated Learning for Continuous Authentication

In the ever-changing world of technology, continuous authentication and comprehensive access management are essential during user interactions with a device. Split Learning (SL) and Federated Learning (FL) have recently emerged as promising technologies for training a decentralized Machine Learning (ML) model. With the increasing use of smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, these distributed technologies enable users with limited resources to complete neural network model training with server assistance and collaboratively combine knowledge between different nodes. In this study, we propose combining these technologies to address the continuous authentication challenge while protecting user privacy and limiting device resource usage. However, the model's training is slowed due to SL sequential training and resource differences between IoT devices with different specifications. Therefore, we use a cluster-based approach to group devices with similar capabilities to mitigate the impact of slow devices while filtering out the devices incapable of training the model. In addition, we address the efficiency and robustness of training ML models by using SL and FL techniques to train the clients simultaneously while analyzing the overhead burden of the process. Following clustering, we select the best set of clients to participate in training through a Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimized on a carefully designed list of objectives. The performance of our proposed framework is compared to baseline methods, and the advantages are demonstrated using a real-life UMDAA-02-FD face detection dataset. The results show that CRSFL, our proposed approach, maintains high accuracy and reduces the overhead burden in continuous authentication scenarios while preserving user privacy.

Enhancing Mutual Trustworthiness in Federated Learning for Data-Rich Smart Cities

Federated learning is a promising collaborative and privacy-preserving machine learning approach in data-rich smart cities. Nevertheless, the inherent heterogeneity of these urban environments presents a significant challenge in selecting trustworthy clients for collaborative model training. The usage of traditional approaches, such as the random client selection technique, poses several threats to the system's integrity due to the possibility of malicious client selection. Primarily, the existing literature focuses on assessing the trustworthiness of clients, neglecting the crucial aspect of trust in federated servers. To bridge this gap, in this work, we propose a novel framework that addresses the mutual trustworthiness in federated learning by considering the trust needs of both the client and the server. Our approach entails: (1) Creating preference functions for servers and clients, allowing them to rank each other based on trust scores, (2) Establishing a reputation-based recommendation system leveraging multiple clients to assess newly connected servers, (3) Assigning credibility scores to recommending devices for better server trustworthiness measurement, (4) Developing a trust assessment mechanism for smart devices using a statistical Interquartile Range (IQR) method, (5) Designing intelligent matching algorithms considering the preferences of both parties. Based on simulation and experimental results, our approach outperforms baseline methods by increasing trust levels, global model accuracy, and reducing non-trustworthy clients in the system.

Trust Driven On-Demand Scheme for Client Deployment in Federated Learning

Containerization technology plays a crucial role in Federated Learning (FL) setups, expanding the pool of potential clients and ensuring the availability of specific subsets for each learning iteration. However, doubts arise about the trustworthiness of devices deployed as clients in FL scenarios, especially when container deployment processes are involved. Addressing these challenges is important, particularly in managing potentially malicious clients capable of disrupting the learning process or compromising the entire model. In our research, we are motivated to integrate a trust element into the client selection and model deployment processes within our system architecture. This is a feature lacking in the initial client selection and deployment mechanism of the On-Demand architecture. We introduce a trust mechanism, named "Trusted-On-Demand-FL", which establishes a relationship of trust between the server and the pool of eligible clients. Utilizing Docker in our deployment strategy enables us to monitor and validate participant actions effectively, ensuring strict adherence to agreed-upon protocols while strengthening defenses against unauthorized data access or tampering. Our simulations rely on a continuous user behavior dataset, deploying an optimization model powered by a genetic algorithm to efficiently select clients for participation. By assigning trust values to individual clients and dynamically adjusting these values, combined with penalizing malicious clients through decreased trust scores, our proposed framework identifies and isolates harmful clients. This approach not only reduces disruptions to regular rounds but also minimizes instances of round dismissal, Consequently enhancing both system stability and security.

The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions

The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed, including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture. Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions, and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users, scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution.

ON-DEMAND-FL: A Dynamic and Efficient Multi-Criteria Federated Learning Client Deployment Scheme

In this paper, we increase the availability and integration of devices in the learning process to enhance the convergence of federated learning (FL) models. To address the issue of having all the data in one location, federated learning, which maintains the ability to learn over decentralized data sets, combines privacy and technology. Until the model converges, the server combines the updated weights obtained from each dataset over a number of rounds. The majority of the literature suggested client selection techniques to accelerate convergence and boost accuracy. However, none of the existing proposals have focused on the flexibility to deploy and select clients as needed, wherever and whenever that may be. Due to the extremely dynamic surroundings, some devices are actually not available to serve as clients in FL, which affects the availability of data for learning and the applicability of the existing solution for client selection. In this paper, we address the aforementioned limitations by introducing an On-Demand-FL, a client deployment approach for FL, offering more volume and heterogeneity of data in the learning process. We make use of the containerization technology such as Docker to build efficient environments using IoT and mobile devices serving as volunteers. Furthermore, Kubernetes is used for orchestration. The Genetic algorithm (GA) is used to solve the multi-objective optimization problem due to its evolutionary strategy. The performed experiments using the Mobile Data Challenge (MDC) dataset and the Localfed framework illustrate the relevance of the proposed approach and the efficiency of the on-the-fly deployment of clients whenever and wherever needed with less discarded rounds and more available data.

FedMint: Intelligent Bilateral Client Selection in Federated Learning with Newcomer IoT Devices

Federated Learning (FL) is a novel distributed privacy-preserving learning paradigm, which enables the collaboration among several participants (e.g., Internet of Things devices) for the training of machine learning models. However, selecting the participants that would contribute to this collaborative training is highly challenging. Adopting a random selection strategy would entail substantial problems due to the heterogeneity in terms of data quality, and computational and communication resources across the participants. Although several approaches have been proposed in the literature to overcome the problem of random selection, most of these approaches follow a unilateral selection strategy. In fact, they base their selection strategy on only the federated server's side, while overlooking the interests of the client devices in the process. To overcome this problem, we present in this paper FedMint, an intelligent client selection approach for federated learning on IoT devices using game theory and bootstrapping mechanism. Our solution involves the design of: (1) preference functions for the client IoT devices and federated servers to allow them to rank each other according to several factors such as accuracy and price, (2) intelligent matching algorithms that take into account the preferences of both parties in their design, and (3) bootstrapping technique that capitalizes on the collaboration of multiple federated servers in order to assign initial accuracy value for the newly connected IoT devices. Based on our simulation findings, our strategy surpasses the VanillaFL selection approach in terms of maximizing both the revenues of the client devices and accuracy of the global federated learning model.

Reward Shaping Using Convolutional Neural Network

In this paper, we propose Value Iteration Network for Reward Shaping (VIN-RS), a potential-based reward shaping mechanism using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The proposed VIN-RS embeds a CNN trained on computed labels using the message passing mechanism of the Hidden Markov Model. The CNN processes images or graphs of the environment to predict the shaping values. Recent work on reward shaping still has limitations towards training on a representation of the Markov Decision Process (MDP) and building an estimate of the transition matrix. The advantage of VIN-RS is to construct an effective potential function from an estimated MDP while automatically inferring the environment transition matrix. The proposed VIN-RS estimates the transition matrix through a self-learned convolution filter while extracting environment details from the input frames or sampled graphs. Due to (1) the previous success of using message passing for reward shaping; and (2) the CNN planning behavior, we use these messages to train the CNN of VIN-RS. Experiments are performed on tabular games, Atari 2600 and MuJoCo, for discrete and continuous action space. Our results illustrate promising improvements in the learning speed and maximum cumulative reward compared to the state-of-the-art.

A two-level solution to fight against dishonest opinions in recommendation-based trust systems

In this paper, we propose a mechanism to deal with dishonest opinions in recommendation-based trust models, at both the collection and processing levels. We consider a scenario in which an agent requests recommendations from multiple parties to build trust toward another agent. At the collection level, we propose to allow agents to self-assess the accuracy of their recommendations and autonomously decide on whether they would participate in the recommendation process or not. At the processing level, we propose a recommendations aggregation technique that is resilient to collusion attacks, followed by a credibility update mechanism for the participating agents. The originality of our work stems from its consideration of dishonest opinions at both the collection and processing levels, which allows for better and more persistent protection against dishonest recommenders. Experiments conducted on the Epinions dataset show that our solution yields better performance in protecting the recommendation process against Sybil attacks, in comparison with a competing model that derives the optimal network of advisors based on the agents' trust values.