PC-SSL: Peer-Coordinated Sequential Split Learning for Intelligent Traffic Analysis in mmWave 5G Networks

Fifth Generation (5G) networks operating on mmWave frequency bands are anticipated to provide an ultrahigh capacity with low latency to serve mobile users requiring high-end cellular services and emerging metaverse applications. Managing and coordinating the high data rate and throughput among the mmWave 5G Base Stations (BSs) is a challenging task, and it requires intelligent network traffic analysis. While BSs coordination has been traditionally treated as a centralized task, this involves higher latency that may adversely impact the user’s Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper, we address this issue by considering the need for distributed coordination among BSs to maximize spectral efficiency and improve the data rate provided to their users via embedded AI. We present Peer-Coordinated Sequential Split Learning dubbed PC-SSL, which is a distributed learning approach whereby multiple 5G BSs collaborate to train and update deep learning models without disclosing their associated mobile users data, i.e., without privacy leakage. Our proposed PC-SSL minimizes the data transmitted between the client BSs and a server by processing data locally on the clients. This results in low latency and computation overhead in making handoff decisions and other networking operations. We evaluate the performance of our proposed PC-SSL in the mmWave 5G throughput prediction use-case based on a real dataset. The results demonstrate that our proposal outperforms conventional approaches and achieves a comparable performance to centralized, vanilla split learning.