Bandwidth-Aware Decentralized Federated Learning in Wired Networks

Federated Learning over 5G/6G Networks: Dynamic Client Selection and Resource Allocation for Heterogeneous Edge Environments

Results support the central conclusion that lightweight joint scheduling can materially improve wall-clock FL efficiency in heterogeneous 5G/6G edge networks.

When Split Federated Learning Meets Prototype Learning: A Communication-Efficient Approach in Wireless Networks

Nowadays, split federated learning (SFL) has emerged as an effective paradigm for enabling privacy-preserving collaborative intelligence across heterogeneous devices with limited computation. However, SFL incurs significant communication overhead in wireless networks due to the uplink transmission of high-dimensional smashed data, which degrades network efficiency. To mitigate the communication bottleneck, we propose a prototype-based SFL framework ProtoSFL. Specifically, each selected client computes local prototypes for observed classes and uploads them to the server. Based on the received prototypes, the server derives global prototypes and optimizes a weighted objective that combines classification loss with prototype alignment loss. The server then updates the model accordingly and returns personalized prototype gradients to the clients. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of ProtoSFL in reducing communication overhead, achieving a substantial reduction in uplink communication, while maintaining competitive testing accuracy under various heterogeneous data settings compared with SFL baselines.

DASFL: Dynamic Adaptive Split Federated Learning for Heterogeneous Clients

FedEdge-Adapt: Adaptive Federated Learning for Heterogeneous Edge AI Systems

Federated learning (FL) on heterogeneous edge networks faces a fundamental tension: standard aggregation protocols assume client homogeneity, yet real-world edge deployments span device tiers with $7 \times$ compute and $\mathbf{1 0} \times$ bandwidth disparities. Slow clients become stragglers that stall synchronous rounds, while uniform gradient compression degrades accuracy on bandwidth-constrained devices. This paper presents FedEdge-Adapt, a novel adaptive federated learning framework that jointly addresses device heterogeneity, straggler mitigation, and communication efficiency without sacrificing model quality. FedEdge-Adapt introduces three tightly coupled mechanisms: (1) tier-aware gradient compression that applies device-class-specific sparsification ratios, (2) drift-corrected aggregation that reweights client updates based on staleness and data heterogeneity, and (3) predictive client selection that anticipates dropout-prone devices using a lightweight resource oracle. We evaluate FedEdge-Adapt on a 30-node heterogeneous edge network over 150 communication rounds using the CIFAR-10 dataset under non-IID distributions ($\alpha=0.5$ Dirichlet) and compare against FedAvg, FedProx, and SCAFFOLD baselines. FedEdge-Adapt achieves 85.44% global accuracy, a 6.85 percentage-point improvement over FedAvg, while simultaneously reducing round latency by $\mathbf{6 7. 4 \%}$, communication overhead by $\mathbf{3 4. 0 \%}$, and client dropout rate by $\mathbf{5 4. 0 \%}$. Convergence is reached in 18 rounds versus 31 for FedAvg. Extended experiments across 100+ rounds confirm long-term stability with no late-stage divergence.

FedA2L: Adaptive layer-wise learning rate adjustment in decentralized federated learning

Decentralized intelligence systems with heterogeneous devices and limited coordination increasingly rely on decentralized federated learning (DFL). However, DFL suffers from convergence inefficiency under data heterogeneity due to the use of a uniform learning rate (LR) that ignores layer-specific optimization needs. Foundational layers are responsible for maintaining network consensus, while specialized layers adapt to local data characteristics, leading to conflicting gradients and degraded performance under non-IID conditions. To address this fundamental tension, this work introduces FedA2L, a method that dynamically adjusts layer-wise LRs based on model divergence signals. By leveraging local update intensity and network consensus constraints, FedA2L seamlessly integrates into existing DFL protocols without additional communication or coordination. Extensive evaluations across DFL algorithms, various model architectures, and datasets demonstrate that FedA2L achieves up to 4.94 times faster convergence than vanilla DFL and reduces communication rounds by up to 59% compared to scheduler-based baselines. Furthermore, FedA2L exhibits resilience to severe data heterogeneity, larger network sizes, and sparse topologies, reducing communication overhead and establishing it as a versatile optimization tool for resource-constrained or large-scale distributed learning in edge and IoT deployments. The code is released at https://github.com/nclabteam/FedA2L.

FSLT: A Federated Split Learning Testbed for 5G Wireless Networks

With the emergence of next-generation communication technologies, the integration of AI into next-generation wireless networks is becoming an important step toward achieving distributed intelligence. Different distributed learning frameworks, such as federated learning (FL) and split learning (SL), enable collaborative model training by distributing computation between user equipment (UEs) and edge servers. However, FL suffers from high communication overhead due to frequent model synchronization, while SL introduces significant latency at the split layer and is sensitive to channel conditions. The effects of wireless channel dynamics on distributed learning performance and the communication-computation trade-offs across different split layers remain insufficiently studied in practical scenarios. In this work, we present a Federated Split Learning Testbed (FSLT) over 5G wireless networks that integrates FL and SL within an OpenAirInterface (OAI) software-defined radio platform. FSLT enables empirical evaluation of learning–communication trade-offs under realistic wireless conditions. The framework distributes neural network layers between UEs and edge servers, allowing investigation of channel variability, latency, and split-point selection on training performance. Experiments on an avatar skeleton extraction task demonstrate that FSLT reduces communication load by 5%-8% compared with FL and achieves faster convergence than SL under dynamic channel conditions. These results provide practical insights into optimizing distributed learning over 5G edge systems and pave the way toward AI-native 6G networks.