CPPer-FL: Clustered Parallel Training for Efficient Personalized Federated Learning

In this paper, a clustered parallel training algorithm is designed for personalized federated learning (Per-FL), called CPPer-FL. CPPer-FL improves the communication and training efficiency of Per-FL from two perspectives, namely, less burden for the central server and lower interaction idling delay. CPPer-FL adopts a client-edge-center learning architecture, which offloads the central server's model aggregation and communication burden to distributed edge servers. Also, CPPer-FL redesigns the cascading model synchronization and updating procedure in conventional Per-FL and changes it to a parallel manner, thus improving the interaction efficiency in the training process. Further, for the proposed hierarchical architecture, two approaches are proposed to cater to Per-FL: similarity-based clustering for client-edge association and personalized model aggregation for parallel model updating, such that clients’ personal features can be preserved in the training process. The convergence of CPPer-FL has been formally analyzed and proved. Evaluation results validate the communication efficiency, model convergence, and model accuracy improvement.