Delay Minimization for NOMA-Assisted Federated Learning

Federated learning (FL) enables multiple users to collaboratively train a shared model while protecting user privacy. In this paper, we investigate the transmission delay minimization problem for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-assisted FL. We analyze the convergence rate of heterogeneous quantized FL to demonstrate that the minimum quantization level among scheduled users is crucial in controlling the trade-off between the number of training rounds and the transmission delay of each round. Based on the convergence analysis, we formulate a delay minimization problem for NOMA-assisted FL and propose a communication-efficient heterogeneous compression NOMA scheme for FL. Subsequently, we develop a block coordinate descent (BCD)-based algorithm that jointly optimizes the sub channel allocation, power allocation, and quan-tization level for each scheduled user. Results reveal that our proposed algorithm significantly reduces the transmission delay while achieving the same learning performance compared with conventional FL algorithms.