A Federated Learning-Based Resource Allocation Scheme for Relaying-Assisted Communications in Multicellular Next Generation Network Topologies

Abstract

Growing and diverse user needs, along with the need for continuous access with minimal delay in densely populated machine-type networks, have led to a significant overhaul of modern mobile communication systems. Within this realm, the integration of advanced physical layer techniques such as relaying-assisted transmission in beyond fifth-generation (B5G) networks aims to not only enhance network performance but also extend coverage across multicellular orientations. However, in cellular environments, the increased interference levels and the complex channel representations introduce a notable rise in the computational complexity associated with radio resource management (RRM) tasks. Machine and deep learning (ML/DL) have been proposed as an efficient way to support the enhanced user demands in densely populated environments since ML/DL models can relax the traffic load that is associated with RRM tasks. There is, however, in these solutions the need for distributed execution of training tasks to accelerate the decision-making process in RRM tasks. For this purpose, federated learning (FL) schemes are considered a promising field of research for next-generation (NG) networks’ RRM. This paper proposes an FL approach to tackle the joint relay node (RN) selection and resource allocation problem subject to power management constraints when in B5G networks. The optimization objective of this approach is to jointly elevate energy (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) levels. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated for various relaying-assisted transmission topologies and through comparison with other state-of-the-art ones (both ML and non-ML). In particular, the total system energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) can be improved by up to approximately 10–20% compared to a state-of-the-art centralized ML scheme. Moreover, achieved accuracy can be improved by up to 10% compared to state-of-the-art non-ML solutions, while training time is reduced by approximately 50%.