Synergies Between Federated Learning and O-RAN: Towards an Elastic Architecture for Multiple Distributed Machine Learning Services

Federated learning (FL) is a popular distributed machine learning (ML) technique. However, implementation of FL over 5G-and-beyond wireless networks faces key challenges caused by (i) dynamics of the wireless network conditions and (ii) the coexistence of multiple FL-services in the system, which are not jointly considered in prior works. We first take a closer look into these challenges and unveil nuanced phenomena called over-/under-provisioning of resources and perspective-driven load balancing. We then take the first steps towards addressing these phenomena by proposing a novel distributed ML architecture called elastic FL (EFL). EFL unleashes the full potential of Open RAN (O-RAN) systems and introduces an elastic resource provisioning methodology to execute FL-services. It further constitutes a multi-time-scale FL management system that introduces three dedicated network control functionalities tailored for FL-services, including (i) non-real-time (non-RT) system descriptor, which trains ML-based applications to predicted both system and FL-related dynamics and parameters; (ii) near-RT FL controller, which handles O-RAN slicing and mobility management for the seamless execution of FL-services; (iii) FL MAC scheduler, which conducts real-time resource allocation to the end clients of various FL-services. We finally prototype EFL to demonstrate its potential in improving the performance of FL-services.