Quantum federated learning (QFL) has recently received increasing attention, where quantum neural networks (QNNs) are integrated into federated learning (FL). In contrast to the existing static QFL methods, we propose slimmable QFL (SlimQFL) in this article, which is a dynamic QFL framework that can cope with time-varying communication channels and computing energy limitations. This is made viable by leveraging the unique nature of a QNN where its angle parameters and pole parameters can be separately trained and dynamically exploited. Simulation results corroborate that SlimQFL achieves higher classification accuracy than Vanilla QFL, particularly under poor channel conditions on average.
Federated learning (FL) is a key enabler for efficient communication and computing, leveraging devices' distributed computing capabilities. However, applying FL in practice is challenging due to the local devices' heterogeneous energy, wireless channel conditions, and non-independently and identically distributed (non-IID) data distributions. To cope with these issues, this paper proposes a novel learning framework by integrating FL and width-adjustable slimmable neural networks (SNN). Integrating FL with SNNs is challenging due to time-varying channel conditions and data distributions. In addition, existing multi-width SNN training algorithms are sensitive to the data distributions across devices, which makes SNN ill-suited for FL. Motivated by this, we propose a communication and energy-efficient SNN-based FL (named SlimFL) that jointly utilizes superposition coding (SC) for global model aggregation and superposition training (ST) for updating local models. By applying SC, SlimFL exchanges the superposition of multiple-width configurations decoded as many times as possible for a given communication throughput. Leveraging ST, SlimFL aligns the forward propagation of different width configurations while avoiding inter-width interference during backpropagation. We formally prove the convergence of SlimFL. The result reveals that SlimFL is not only communication-efficient but also deals with non-IID data distributions and poor channel conditions, which is also corroborated by data-intensive simulations.
While witnessing the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era and beyond, quantum federated learning (QFL) has recently become an emerging field of study. In QFL, each quantum computer or device locally trains its quantum neural network (QNN) with trainable gates, and communicates only these gate parameters over classical channels, without costly quantum communications. Towards enabling QFL under various channel conditions, in this article we develop a depth-controllable architecture of entangled slimmable quantum neural networks (eSQNNs), and propose an entangled slimmable QFL (eSQFL) that communicates the superposition-coded parameters of eS-QNNs. Compared to the existing depth-fixed QNNs, training the depth-controllable eSQNN architecture is more challenging due to high entanglement entropy and inter-depth interference, which are mitigated by introducing entanglement controlled universal (CU) gates and an inplace fidelity distillation (IPFD) regularizer penalizing inter-depth quantum state differences, respectively. Furthermore, we optimize the superposition coding power allocation by deriving and minimizing the convergence bound of eSQFL. In an image classification task, extensive simulations corroborate the effectiveness of eSQFL in terms of prediction accuracy, fidelity, and entropy compared to Vanilla QFL as well as under different channel conditions and various data distributions.
In recent years, quantum computing (QC) has been getting a lot of attention from industry and academia. Especially, among various QC research topics, variational quantum circuit (VQC) enables quantum deep reinforcement learning (QRL). Many studies of QRL have shown that the QRL is superior to the classical reinforcement learning (RL) methods under the constraints of the number of training parameters. This paper extends and demonstrates the QRL to quantum multi-agent RL (QMARL). However, the extension of QRL to QMARL is not straightforward due to the challenge of the noise intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) and the non-stationary properties in classical multi-agent RL (MARL). Therefore, this paper proposes the centralized training and decentralized execution (CTDE) QMARL framework by designing novel VQCs for the framework to cope with these issues. To corroborate the QMARL framework, this paper conducts the QMARL demonstration in a single-hop environment where edge agents offload packets to clouds. The extensive demonstration shows that the proposed QMARL framework enhances 57.7% of total reward than classical frameworks.
Although quantum supremacy is yet to come, there has recently been an increasing interest in identifying the potential of quantum machine learning (QML) in the looming era of practical quantum computing. Motivated by this, in this article we re-design multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) based on the unique characteristics of quantum neural networks (QNNs) having two separate dimensions of trainable parameters: angle parameters affecting the output qubit states, and pole parameters associated with the output measurement basis. Exploiting this dyadic trainability as meta-learning capability, we propose quantum meta MARL (QM2ARL) that first applies angle training for meta-QNN learning, followed by pole training for few-shot or local-QNN training. To avoid overfitting, we develop an angle-to-pole regularization technique injecting noise into the pole domain during angle training. Furthermore, by exploiting the pole as the memory address of each trained QNN, we introduce the concept of pole memory allowing one to save and load trained QNNs using only two-parameter pole values. We theoretically prove the convergence of angle training under the angle-to-pole regularization, and by simulation corroborate the effectiveness of QM2ARL in achieving high reward and fast convergence, as well as of the pole memory in fast adaptation to a time-varying environment.
In recent years, quantum machine learning (QML) has been actively used for various tasks, e.g., classification, reinforcement learning, and adversarial learning. However, these QML studies are unable to carry out complex tasks due to scalability issues on input and output which is currently the biggest hurdle in QML. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to overcome the problem of scalability. Motivated by this challenge, we focus on projection-valued measurements (PVM) which utilize the nature of probability amplitude in quantum statistical mechanics. By leveraging PVM, the output dimension is expanded from $q$, which is the number of qubits, to $2^q$. We propose a novel QML framework that utilizes PVM for multi-class classification. Our framework is proven to outperform the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methodologies with various datasets, assuming no more than 6 qubits are used. Furthermore, our PVM-based QML shows about $42.2\%$ better performance than the SOTA framework.
This paper addresses a novel multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL)-based positioning algorithm for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) collaboration (i.e., UAVs work as mobile base stations). The primary objective of the proposed algorithm is to establish dependable mobile access networks for cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communication, thereby facilitating the realization of high-quality intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The reliable mobile access services can be achieved in following two ways, i.e., i) energy-efficient UAV operation and ii) reliable wireless communication services. For energy-efficient UAV operation, the reward of our proposed MADRL algorithm contains the features for UAV energy consumption models in order to realize efficient operations. Furthermore, for reliable wireless communication services, the quality of service (QoS) requirements of individual users are considered as a part of rewards and 60GHz mmWave radio is used for mobile access. This paper considers the 60GHz mmWave access for utilizing the benefits of i) ultra-wide-bandwidth for multi-Gbps high-speed communications and ii) high-directional communications for spatial reuse that is obviously good for densely deployed users. Lastly, the comprehensive and data-intensive performance evaluation of the proposed MADRL-based algorithm for multi-UAV positioning is conducted in this paper. The results of these evaluations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other existing algorithms.
With the beginning of the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era, quantum neural network (QNN) has recently emerged as a solution for the problems that classical neural networks cannot solve. Moreover, QCNN is attracting attention as the next generation of QNN because it can process high-dimensional vector input. However, due to the nature of quantum computing, it is difficult for the classical QCNN to extract a sufficient number of features. Motivated by this, we propose a new version of QCNN, named scalable quantum convolutional neural network (sQCNN). In addition, using the fidelity of QC, we propose an sQCNN training algorithm named reverse fidelity training (RF-Train) that maximizes the performance of sQCNN.
Guaranteeing real-time and accurate object detection simultaneously is paramount in autonomous driving environments. However, the existing object detection neural network systems are characterized by a tradeoff between computation time and accuracy, making it essential to optimize such a tradeoff. Fortunately, in many autonomous driving environments, images come in a continuous form, providing an opportunity to use optical flow. In this paper, we improve the performance of an object detection neural network utilizing optical flow estimation. In addition, we propose a Lyapunov optimization framework for time-average performance maximization subject to stability. It adaptively determines whether to use optical flow to suit the dynamic vehicle environment, thereby ensuring the vehicle's queue stability and the time-average maximum performance simultaneously. To verify the key ideas, we conduct numerical experiments with various object detection neural networks and optical flow estimation networks. In addition, we demonstrate the self-configurable stabilized detection with YOLOv3-tiny and FlowNet2-S, which are the real-time object detection network and an optical flow estimation network, respectively. In the demonstration, our proposed framework improves the accuracy by 3.02%, the number of detected objects by 59.6%, and the queue stability for computing capabilities.
In recent years, the field of quantum science has attracted significant interest across various disciplines, including quantum machine learning, quantum communication, and quantum computing. Among these emerging areas, quantum federated learning (QFL) has gained particular attention due to the integration of quantum neural networks (QNNs) with traditional federated learning (FL) techniques. In this study, a novel approach entitled quantum split learning (QSL) is presented, which represents an advanced extension of classical split learning. Previous research in classical computing has demonstrated numerous advantages of split learning, such as accelerated convergence, reduced communication costs, and enhanced privacy protection. To maximize the potential of QSL, cross-channel pooling is introduced, a technique that capitalizes on the distinctive properties of quantum state tomography facilitated by QNNs. Through rigorous numerical analysis, evidence is provided that QSL not only achieves a 1.64\% higher top-1 accuracy compared to QFL but also demonstrates robust privacy preservation in the context of the MNIST classification task.
With the beginning of the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era, a quantum neural network (QNN) has recently emerged as a solution for several specific problems that classical neural networks cannot solve. Moreover, a quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN) is the quantum-version of CNN because it can process high-dimensional vector inputs in contrast to QNN. However, due to the nature of quantum computing, it is difficult to scale up the QCNN to extract a sufficient number of features due to barren plateaus. Motivated by this, a novel 3D scalable QCNN (sQCNN-3D) is proposed for point cloud data processing in classification applications. Furthermore, reverse fidelity training (RF-Train) is additionally considered on top of sQCNN-3D for diversifying features with a limited number of qubits using the fidelity of quantum computing. Our data-intensive performance evaluation verifies that the proposed algorithm achieves desired performance.
Chanyoung Park, Won Joon Yun, Jae Pyoung Kim et al.
This paper proposes a novel algorithm, named quantum multi-agent actor-critic networks (QMACN) for autonomously constructing a robust mobile access system employing multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In the context of facilitating collaboration among multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the application of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) techniques is regarded as a promising approach. These methods enable UAVs to learn collectively, optimizing their actions within a shared environment, ultimately leading to more efficient cooperative behavior. Furthermore, the principles of a quantum computing (QC) are employed in our study to enhance the training process and inference capabilities of the UAVs involved. By leveraging the unique computational advantages of quantum computing, our approach aims to boost the overall effectiveness of the UAV system. However, employing a QC introduces scalability challenges due to the near intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) limitation associated with qubit usage. The proposed algorithm addresses this issue by implementing a quantum centralized critic, effectively mitigating the constraints imposed by NISQ limitations. Additionally, the advantages of the QMACN with performance improvements in terms of training speed and wireless service quality are verified via various data-intensive evaluations. Furthermore, this paper validates that a noise injection scheme can be used for handling environmental uncertainties in order to realize robust mobile access.
Ulku Meteriz-Yildiran, Necip Fazil Yildiran, Joongheon Kim et al.
The extensive use of smartphones and wearable devices has facilitated many useful applications. For example, with Global Positioning System (GPS)-equipped smart and wearable devices, many applications can gather, process, and share rich metadata, such as geolocation, trajectories, elevation, and time. For example, fitness applications, such as Runkeeper and Strava, utilize the information for activity tracking and have recently witnessed a boom in popularity. Those fitness tracker applications have their own web platforms and allow users to share activities on such platforms or even with other social network platforms. To preserve the privacy of users while allowing sharing, several of those platforms may allow users to disclose partial information, such as the elevation profile for an activity, which supposedly would not leak the location of the users. In this work, and as a cautionary tale, we create a proof of concept where we examine the extent to which elevation profiles can be used to predict the location of users. To tackle this problem, we devise three plausible threat settings under which the city or borough of the targets can be predicted. Those threat settings define the amount of information available to the adversary to launch the prediction attacks. Establishing that simple features of elevation profiles, e.g., spectral features, are insufficient, we devise both natural language processing (NLP)-inspired text-like representation and computer vision-inspired image-like representation of elevation profiles, and we convert the problem at hand into text and image classification problem. We use both traditional machine learning- and deep learning-based techniques and achieve a prediction success rate ranging from 59.59\% to 99.80\%. The findings are alarming, highlighting that sharing elevation information may have significant location privacy risks.
Soohyun Park, Jae Pyoung Kim, Chanyoung Park et al.
For Industry 4.0 Revolution, cooperative autonomous mobility systems are widely used based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). However, the MARL-based algorithms suffer from huge parameter utilization and convergence difficulties with many agents. To tackle these problems, a quantum MARL (QMARL) algorithm based on the concept of actor-critic network is proposed, which is beneficial in terms of scalability, to deal with the limitations in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. Additionally, our QMARL is also beneficial in terms of efficient parameter utilization and fast convergence due to quantum supremacy. Note that the reward in our QMARL is defined as task precision over computation time in multiple agents, thus, multi-agent cooperation can be realized. For further improvement, an additional technique for scalability is proposed, which is called projection value measure (PVM). Based on PVM, our proposed QMARL can achieve the highest reward, by reducing the action dimension into a logarithmic-scale. Finally, we can conclude that our proposed QMARL with PVM outperforms the other algorithms in terms of efficient parameter utilization, fast convergence, and scalability.
This paper presents the deep learning-based recent achievements to resolve the problem of autonomous mobility control and efficient resource management of autonomous vehicles and UAVs, i.e., (i) multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), and (ii) neural Myerson auction. Representatively, communication network (CommNet), which is one of the most popular MARL algorithms, is introduced to enable multiple agents to take actions in a distributed manner for their shared goals by training all agents' states and actions in a single neural network. Moreover, the neural Myerson auction guarantees trustfulness among multiple agents as well as achieves the optimal revenue of highly dynamic systems. Therefore, we survey the recent studies on autonomous mobility control based on MARL and neural Myerson auction. Furthermore, we emphasize that integration of MARL and neural Myerson auction is expected to be critical for efficient and trustful autonomous mobility services.
This paper proposes a novel centralized training and distributed execution (CTDE)-based multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) method for multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) control in autonomous mobile access applications. For the purpose, a single neural network is utilized in centralized training for cooperation among multiple agents while maximizing the total quality of service (QoS) in mobile access applications.
In the literature of modern network security research, deriving effective and efficient course-of-action (COA) attach search methods are of interests in industry and academia. As the network size grows, the traditional COA attack search methods can suffer from the limitations to computing and communication resources. Therefore, various methods have been developed to solve these problems, and reinforcement learning (RL)-based intelligent algorithms are one of the most effective solutions. Therefore, we review the RL-based COA attack search methods for network attack scenarios in terms of the trends and their contrib
Chanyoung Park, Jae Pyoung Kim, Won Joon Yun et al.
Quantum machine learning (QML) has received a lot of attention according to its light training parameter numbers and speeds; and the advances of QML lead to active research on quantum multi-agent reinforcement learning (QMARL). Existing classical multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) features non-stationarity and uncertain properties. Therefore, this paper presents a simulation software framework for novel QMARL to control autonomous multi-drones, i.e., quantum multi-drone reinforcement learning. Our proposed framework accomplishes reasonable reward convergence and service quality performance with fewer trainable parameters. Furthermore, it shows more stable training results. Lastly, our proposed software allows us to analyze the training process and results.
In modern on-driving computing environments, many sensors are used for context-aware applications. This paper utilizes two deep learning models, U-Net and EfficientNet, which consist of a convolutional neural network (CNN), to detect hand gestures and remove noise in the Range Doppler Map image that was measured through a millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar. To improve the performance of classification, accurate pre-processing algorithms are essential. Therefore, a novel pre-processing approach to denoise images before entering the first deep learning model stage increases the accuracy of classification. Thus, this paper proposes a deep neural network based high-performance nonlinear pre-processing method.
One of the key topics in network security research is the autonomous COA (Couse-of-Action) attack search method. Traditional COA attack search methods that passively search for attacks can be difficult, especially as the network gets bigger. To address these issues, new autonomous COA techniques are being developed, and among them, an intelligent spatial algorithm is designed in this paper for efficient operations in scalable networks. On top of the spatial search, a Monte-Carlo (MC)- based temporal approach is additionally considered for taking care of time-varying network behaviors. Therefore, we propose a spatio-temporal attack COA search algorithm for scalable and time-varying networks.
It has been considered that urban air mobility (UAM), also known as drone-taxi or electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL), will play a key role in future transportation. By putting UAM into practical future transportation, several benefits can be realized, i.e., (i) the total travel time of passengers can be reduced compared to traditional transportation and (ii) there is no environmental pollution and no special labor costs to operate the system because electric batteries will be used in UAM system. However, there are various dynamic and uncertain factors in the flight environment, i.e., passenger sudden service requests, battery discharge, and collision among UAMs. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel cooperative MADRL algorithm based on centralized training and distributed execution (CTDE) concepts for reliable and efficient passenger delivery in UAM networks. According to the performance evaluation results, we confirm that the proposed algorithm outperforms other existing algorithms in terms of the number of serviced passengers increase (30%) and the waiting time per serviced passenger decrease (26%).
Reinforcement learning (RL) enables agents to learn optimal policies through environmental interaction. However, RL suffers from reduced learning efficiency due to the curse of dimensionality in high-dimensional spaces. Quantum reinforcement learning (QRL) addresses this issue by leveraging superposition and entanglement in quantum computing, allowing efficient handling of high-dimensional problems with fewer resources. QRL combines quantum neural networks (QNNs) with RL, where the parameterized quantum circuit (PQC) acts as the core computational module. The PQC performs linear and nonlinear transformations through gate operations, similar to hidden layers in classical neural networks. Previous QRL studies, however, have used fixed PQC structures based on empirical intuition without verifying their optimality. This paper proposes a QRL-NAS algorithm that integrates quantum neural architecture search (QNAS) to optimize PQC structures within QRL. Experiments demonstrate that QRL-NAS achieves higher rewards than QRL with fixed circuits, validating its effectiveness and practical utility.
Achieving global space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) access only with CubeSats presents significant challenges such as the access sustainability limitations in specific regions (e.g., polar regions) and the energy efficiency limitations in CubeSats. To tackle these problems, high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (HALE-UAVs) can complement these CubeSat shortcomings for providing cooperatively global access sustainability and energy efficiency. However, as the number of CubeSats and HALE-UAVs, increases, the scheduling dimension of each ground station (GS) increases. As a result, each GS can fall into the curse of dimensionality, and this challenge becomes one major hurdle for efficient global access. Therefore, this paper provides a quantum multi-agent reinforcement Learning (QMARL)-based method for scheduling between GSs and CubeSats/HALE-UAVs in order to improve global access availability and energy efficiency. The main reason why the QMARL-based scheduler can be beneficial is that the algorithm facilitates a logarithmic-scale reduction in scheduling action dimensions, which is one critical feature as the number of CubeSats and HALE-UAVs expands. Additionally, individual GSs have different traffic demands depending on their locations and characteristics, thus it is essential to provide differentiated access services. The superiority of the proposed scheduler is validated through data-intensive experiments in realistic CubeSat/HALE-UAV settings.
Clustering data is an unsupervised learning approach that aims to divide a set of data points into multiple groups. It is a crucial yet demanding subject in machine learning and data mining. Its successful applications span various fields. However, conventional clustering techniques necessitate the consideration of balance significance in specific applications. Therefore, this paper addresses the challenge of imbalanced clustering problems and presents a new method for balanced clustering by utilizing entropy-aware similarity, which can be defined as the degree of balances. We have coined the term, entropy-aware similarity for balanced clustering (EASB), which maximizes balance during clustering by complementary clustering of unbalanced data and incorporating entropy in a novel similarity formula that accounts for both angular differences and distances. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated on actual melanoma medial data, specifically the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC) 2019 and 2020 challenge datasets, to demonstrate how it can successfully cluster the data while preserving balance. Lastly, we can confirm that the proposed method exhibited outstanding performance in detecting melanoma, comparing to classical methods.
It seems as though progressively more people are in the race to upload content, data, and information online; and hospitals haven't neglected this trend either. Hospitals are now at the forefront for multi-site medical data sharing to provide groundbreaking advancements in the way health records are shared and patients are diagnosed. Sharing of medical data is essential in modern medical research. Yet, as with all data sharing technology, the challenge is to balance improved treatment with protecting patient's personal information. This paper provides a novel split learning algorithm coined the term, "multi-site split learning", which enables a secure transfer of medical data between multiple hospitals without fear of exposing personal data contained in patient records. It also explores the effects of varying the number of end-systems and the ratio of data-imbalance on the deep learning performance. A guideline for the most optimal configuration of split learning that ensures privacy of patient data whilst achieving performance is empirically given. We argue the benefits of our multi-site split learning algorithm, especially regarding the privacy preserving factor, using CT scans of COVID-19 patients, X-ray bone scans, and cholesterol level medical data.
CCTV-based surveillance using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is considered a key technology for security in smart city environments. This paper creates a case where the UAVs with CCTV-cameras fly over the city area for flexible and reliable surveillance services. UAVs should be deployed to cover a large area while minimize overlapping and shadow areas for a reliable surveillance system. However, the operation of UAVs is subject to high uncertainty, necessitating autonomous recovery systems. This work develops a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning-based management scheme for reliable industry surveillance in smart city applications. The core idea this paper employs is autonomously replenishing the UAV's deficient network requirements with communications. Via intensive simulations, our proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of surveillance coverage, user support capability, and computational costs.
A successful deployment of drones provides an ideal solution for surveillance systems. Using drones for surveillance can provide access to areas that may be difficult or impossible to reach by humans or in-land vehicles gathering images or video recordings of a specific target in their coverage. Therefore, we introduces a data delivery drone to transfer collected surveillance data in harsh communication conditions. This paper proposes a Myerson auction-based asynchronous data delivery in an aerial distributed data platform in surveillance systems taking battery limitation and long flight constraints into account. In this paper, multiple delivery drones compete to offer data transfer to a single fixed-location surveillance drone. Our proposed Myerson auction-based algorithm, which uses the truthful second-price auction (SPA) as a baseline, is to maximize the seller's revenue while meeting several desirable properties, i.e., individual rationality and incentive compatibility while pursuing truthful operations. On top of these SPA-based operations, a deep learning-based framework is additionally designed for delivery performance improvements.
Self-driving cars and autonomous driving research has been receiving considerable attention as major promising prospects in modern artificial intelligence applications. According to the evolution of advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), the design of self-driving vehicle and autonomous driving systems becomes complicated and safety-critical. In general, the intelligent system simultaneously and efficiently activates ADAS functions. Therefore, it is essential to consider reliable ADAS function coordination to control the driving system, safely. In order to deal with this issue, this paper proposes a randomized adversarial imitation learning (RAIL) algorithm. The RAIL is a novel derivative-free imitation learning method for autonomous driving with various ADAS functions coordination; and thus it imitates the operation of decision maker that controls autonomous driving with various ADAS functions. The proposed method is able to train the decision maker that deals with the LIDAR data and controls the autonomous driving in multi-lane complex highway environments. The simulation-based evaluation verifies that the proposed method achieves desired performance.
Mobile devices are indispensable sources of big data. Federated learning (FL) has a great potential in exploiting these private data by exchanging locally trained models instead of their raw data. However, mobile devices are often energy limited and wirelessly connected, and FL cannot cope flexibly with their heterogeneous and time-varying energy capacity and communication throughput, limiting the adoption. Motivated by these issues, we propose a novel energy and communication efficient FL framework, coined SlimFL. To resolve the heterogeneous energy capacity problem, each device in SlimFL runs a width-adjustable slimmable neural network (SNN). To address the heterogeneous communication throughput problem, each full-width (1.0x) SNN model and its half-width ($0.5$x) model are superposition-coded before transmission, and successively decoded after reception as the 0.5x or $1.0$x model depending on the channel quality. Simulation results show that SlimFL can simultaneously train both $0.5$x and $1.0$x models with reasonable accuracy and convergence speed, compared to its vanilla FL counterpart separately training the two models using $2$x more communication resources. Surprisingly, SlimFL achieves even higher accuracy with lower energy footprints than vanilla FL for poor channels and non-IID data distributions, under which vanilla FL converges slowly.
This paper aims to integrate two synergetic technologies, federated learning (FL) and width-adjustable slimmable neural network (SNN) architectures. FL preserves data privacy by exchanging the locally trained models of mobile devices. By adopting SNNs as local models, FL can flexibly cope with the time-varying energy capacities of mobile devices. Combining FL and SNNs is however non-trivial, particularly under wireless connections with time-varying channel conditions. Furthermore, existing multi-width SNN training algorithms are sensitive to the data distributions across devices, so are ill-suited to FL. Motivated by this, we propose a communication and energy-efficient SNN-based FL (named SlimFL) that jointly utilizes superposition coding (SC) for global model aggregation and superposition training (ST) for updating local models. By applying SC, SlimFL exchanges the superposition of multiple width configurations that are decoded as many as possible for a given communication throughput. Leveraging ST, SlimFL aligns the forward propagation of different width configurations, while avoiding the inter-width interference during backpropagation. We formally prove the convergence of SlimFL. The result reveals that SlimFL is not only communication-efficient but also can counteract non-IID data distributions and poor channel conditions, which is also corroborated by simulations.
Autonomous surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deployed to observe the streets of the city for any suspicious activities. This paper utilizes surveillance UAVs for the purpose of detecting the presence of a fire in the streets. An extensive database is collected from UAV surveillance drones. With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI), fire stations can swiftly identify the presence of a fire emerging in the neighborhood. Spatio-temporal split learning is applied to this scenario to preserve privacy and globally train a fire classification model. Fires are hazardous natural disasters that can spread very quickly. Swift identification of fire is required to deploy firefighters to the scene. In order to do this, strong communication between the UAV and the central server where the deep learning process occurs is required. Improving communication resilience is integral to enhancing a safe experience on the roads. Therefore, this paper explores the adequate number of clients and data ratios for split learning in this UAV setting, as well as the required network infrastructure.
In a decade, the adaptive quality control of video streaming and the super-resolution (SR) technique have been deeply explored. As edge devices improved to have exceptional processing capability than ever before, streaming users can enhance the received image quality to allow the transmitter to compress the images to save its power or pursue network efficiency. In this sense, this paper proposes a novel dynamic video streaming algorithm that adaptively compresses video chunks at the transmitter and separately enhances the quality at the receiver using SR. In order to allow transmission of video chunks with different compression levels and control of the computation burden, we present the adaptive SR network which is optimized by minimizing the weighted sum of losses extracted from different layer outputs. for dynamic video streaming. In addition, we jointly orchestrate video delivery and resource usage, and the proposed video delivery scheme balances the tradeoff well among the average video quality, the queuing delay, buffering time, transmit power, and computation power. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme pursues the quality-of-services (QoS) of the video streaming better than the adaptive quality control without the cooperation of the transmitter and the receiver and the non-adaptive SR network.
As the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) functions become more sophisticated, the strategies that properly coordinate interaction and communication among the ADAS functions are required for autonomous driving. This paper proposes a derivative-free optimization based imitation learning method for the decision maker that coordinates the proper ADAS functions. The proposed method is able to make decisions in multi-lane highways timely with the LIDAR data. The simulation-based evaluation verifies that the proposed method presents desired performance.
Realtime face identification (FID) from a video feed is highly computation-intensive, and may exhaust computation resources if performed on a device with a limited amount of resources (e.g., a mobile device). In general, FID performs better when images are sampled at a higher rate, minimizing false negatives. However, performing it at an overwhelmingly high rate exposes the system to the risk of a queue overflow that hampers the system's reliability. This paper proposes a novel, queue-aware FID framework that adapts the sampling rate to maximize the FID performance while avoiding a queue overflow by implementing the Lyapunov optimization. A preliminary evaluation via a trace-based simulation confirms the effectiveness of the framework.
Machine learning requires a large volume of sample data, especially when it is used in high-accuracy medical applications. However, patient records are one of the most sensitive private information that is not usually shared among institutes. This paper presents spatio-temporal split learning, a distributed deep neural network framework, which is a turning point in allowing collaboration among privacy-sensitive organizations. Our spatio-temporal split learning presents how distributed machine learning can be efficiently conducted with minimal privacy concerns. The proposed split learning consists of a number of clients and a centralized server. Each client has only has one hidden layer, which acts as the privacy-preserving layer, and the centralized server comprises the other hidden layers and the output layer. Since the centralized server does not need to access the training data and trains the deep neural network with parameters received from the privacy-preserving layer, privacy of original data is guaranteed. We have coined the term, spatio-temporal split learning, as multiple clients are spatially distributed to cover diverse datasets from different participants, and we can temporally split the learning process, detaching the privacy preserving layer from the rest of the learning process to minimize privacy breaches. This paper shows how we can analyze the medical data whilst ensuring privacy using our proposed multi-site spatio-temporal split learning algorithm on Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) chest Computed Tomography (CT) scans, MUsculoskeletal RAdiographs (MURA) X-ray images, and cholesterol levels.
In modern deep learning research, finding optimal (or near optimal) neural network models is one of major research directions and it is widely studied in many applications. In this paper, the main research trends of neural architecture search (NAS) are classified as neuro-evolutionary algorithms, reinforcement learning based algorithms, and one-shot architecture search approaches. Furthermore, each research trend is introduced and finally all the major three trends are compared. Lastly, the future research directions of NAS research trends are discussed.
The emergence of quantum computing enables for researchers to apply quantum circuit on many existing studies. Utilizing quantum circuit and quantum differential programming, many research are conducted such as \textit{Quantum Machine Learning} (QML). In particular, quantum reinforcement learning is a good field to test the possibility of quantum machine learning, and a lot of research is being done. This work will introduce the concept of quantum reinforcement learning using a variational quantum circuit, and confirm its possibility through implementation and experimentation. We will first present the background knowledge and working principle of quantum reinforcement learning, and then guide the implementation method using the PennyLane library. We will also discuss the power and possibility of quantum reinforcement learning from the experimental results obtained through this work.
This paper proposes a novel split learning framework with multiple end-systems in order to realize privacypreserving deep neural network computation. In conventional split learning frameworks, deep neural network computation is separated into multiple computing systems for hiding entire network architectures. In our proposed framework, multiple computing end-systems are sharing one centralized server in split learning computation, where the multiple end-systems are with input and first hidden layers and the centralized server is with the other hidden layers and output layer. This framework, which is called as spatio-temporal split learning, is spatially separated for gathering data from multiple end-systems and also temporally separated due to the nature of split learning. Our performance evaluation verifies that our proposed framework shows nearoptimal accuracy while preserving data privacy.
Quantum deep learning is a research field for the use of quantum computing techniques for training deep neural networks. The research topics and directions of deep learning and quantum computing have been separated for long time, however by discovering that quantum circuits can act like artificial neural networks, quantum deep learning research is widely adopted. This paper explains the backgrounds and basic principles of quantum deep learning and also introduces major achievements. After that, this paper discusses the challenges of quantum deep learning research in multiple perspectives. Lastly, this paper presents various future research directions and application fields of quantum deep learning.
With the development of communication technologies in 5G networks and the Internet of things (IoT), a massive amount of generated data can improve machine learning (ML) inference through data sharing. However, security and privacy concerns are major obstacles in distributed and wireless networks. In addition, IoT has a limitation on system resources depending on the purpose of services. In addition, a blockchain technology enables secure transactions among participants through consensus algorithms and encryption without a centralized coordinator. In this paper, we first review the federated leaning (FL) and blockchain mechanisms, and then, present a survey on the integration of blockchain and FL for data sharing in industrial, vehicle, and healthcare applications.
In this article, we study the problem of air-to-ground ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) for a moving ground user. This is done by controlling multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in real time while avoiding inter-UAV collisions. To this end, we propose a novel multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) framework, coined a graph attention exchange network (GAXNet). In GAXNet, each UAV constructs an attention graph locally measuring the level of attention to its neighboring UAVs, while exchanging the attention weights with other UAVs so as to reduce the attention mismatch between them. Simulation results corroborates that GAXNet achieves up to 4.5x higher rewards during training. At execution, without incurring inter-UAV collisions, GAXNet achieves 6.5x lower latency with the target 0.0000001 error rate, compared to a state-of-the-art baseline framework.
In real-time strategy (RTS) game artificial intelligence research, various multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) algorithms are widely and actively used nowadays. Most of the research is based on StarCraft II environment because it is the most well-known RTS games in world-wide. In our proposed MADRL-based algorithm, distributed MADRL is fundamentally used that is called QMIX. In addition to QMIX-based distributed computation, we consider state categorization which can reduce computational complexity significantly. Furthermore, self-attention mechanisms are used for identifying the relationship among agents in the form of graphs. Based on these approaches, we propose a categorized state graph attention policy (CSGA-policy). As observed in the performance evaluation of our proposed CSGA-policy with the most well-known StarCraft II simulation environment, our proposed algorithm works well in various settings, as expected.
Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is a useful type of Neural Networks in various types of applications including generative models and feature extraction. Various types of GANs are being researched with different insights, resulting in a diverse family of GANs with a better performance in each generation. This review focuses on various GANs categorized by their common traits.
Developing agents that can perform challenging complex tasks is the goal of reinforcement learning. The model-free reinforcement learning has been considered as a feasible solution. However, the state of the art research has been to develop increasingly complicated techniques. This increasing complexity makes the reconstruction difficult. Furthermore, the problem of reward dependency is still exists. As a result, research on imitation learning, which learns policy from a demonstration of experts, has begun to attract attention. Imitation learning directly learns policy based on data on the behavior of the experts without the explicit reward signal provided by the environment. However, imitation learning tries to optimize policies based on deep reinforcement learning such as trust region policy optimization. As a result, deep reinforcement learning based imitation learning also poses a crisis of reproducibility. The issue of complex model-free model has received considerable critical attention. A derivative-free optimization based reinforcement learning and the simplification on policies obtain competitive performance on the dynamic complex tasks. The simplified policies and derivative free methods make algorithm be simple. The reconfiguration of research demo becomes easy. In this paper, we propose an imitation learning method that takes advantage of the derivative-free optimization with simple linear policies. The proposed method performs simple random search in the parameter space of policies and shows computational efficiency. Experiments in this paper show that the proposed model, without a direct reward signal from the environment, obtains competitive performance on the MuJoCo locomotion tasks.
Jihong Park, Sumudu Samarakoon, Anis Elgabli et al.
Machine learning (ML) is a promising enabler for the fifth generation (5G) communication systems and beyond. By imbuing intelligence into the network edge, edge nodes can proactively carry out decision-making, and thereby react to local environmental changes and disturbances while experiencing zero communication latency. To achieve this goal, it is essential to cater for high ML inference accuracy at scale under time-varying channel and network dynamics, by continuously exchanging fresh data and ML model updates in a distributed way. Taming this new kind of data traffic boils down to improving the communication efficiency of distributed learning by optimizing communication payload types, transmission techniques, and scheduling, as well as ML architectures, algorithms, and data processing methods. To this end, this article aims to provide a holistic overview of relevant communication and ML principles, and thereby present communication-efficient and distributed learning frameworks with selected use cases.
MyungJae Shin, Chihoon Hwang, Joongheon Kim et al.
User-generated data distributions are often imbalanced across devices and labels, hampering the performance of federated learning (FL). To remedy to this non-independent and identically distributed (non-IID) data problem, in this work we develop a privacy-preserving XOR based mixup data augmentation technique, coined XorMixup, and thereby propose a novel one-shot FL framework, termed XorMixFL. The core idea is to collect other devices' encoded data samples that are decoded only using each device's own data samples. The decoding provides synthetic-but-realistic samples until inducing an IID dataset, used for model training. Both encoding and decoding procedures follow the bit-wise XOR operations that intentionally distort raw samples, thereby preserving data privacy. Simulation results corroborate that XorMixFL achieves up to 17.6% higher accuracy than Vanilla FL under a non-IID MNIST dataset.
Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, have seen on the rise in their popularity and value, making them a target to several forms of Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, and calling for a better understanding of their attack surface from both security and distributed systems standpoints. In this paper, and in the pursuit of understanding the attack surface of blockchains, we explore a new form of attack that can be carried out on the memory pools (mempools) and mainly targets blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. We study this attack on Bitcoin mempool and explore the attack effects on transactions fee paid by benign users. To counter this attack, this paper further proposes Contra-*:, a set of countermeasures utilizing fee, age, and size (thus, Contra-F, Contra-A, and Contra-S) as prioritization mechanisms. Contra-*: optimize the mempool size and help in countering the effects of DoS attacks due to spam transactions. We evaluate Contra-* by simulations and analyze their effectiveness under various attack conditions.
This paper proposes a distributed deep learning framework for privacy-preserving medical data training. In order to avoid patients' data leakage in medical platforms, the hidden layers in the deep learning framework are separated and where the first layer is kept in platform and others layers are kept in a centralized server. Whereas keeping the original patients' data in local platforms maintain their privacy, utilizing the server for subsequent layers improves learning performance by using all data from each platform during training.
The average accuracy is one of major evaluation metrics for classification systems, while the accuracy deviation is another important performance metric used to evaluate various deep neural networks. In this paper, we present a new ensemble-like fast deep neural network, Harmony, that can reduce the accuracy deviation among categories without degrading overall average accuracy. Harmony consists of three sub-models, namely, Target model, Complementary model, and Conductor model. In Harmony, an object is classified by using either Target model or Complementary model. Target model is a conventional classification network for general categories, while Complementary model is a classification network especially for weak categories that are inaccurately classified by Target model. Conductor model is used to select one of two models. Experimental results demonstrate that Harmony accurately classifies categories, while it reduces the accuracy deviation among the categories.
With the evolution of various advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) platforms, the design of autonomous driving system is becoming more complex and safety-critical. The autonomous driving system simultaneously activates multiple ADAS functions; and thus it is essential to coordinate various ADAS functions. This paper proposes a randomized adversarial imitation learning (RAIL) method that imitates the coordination of autonomous vehicle equipped with advanced sensors. The RAIL policies are trained through derivative-free optimization for the decision maker that coordinates the proper ADAS functions, e.g., smart cruise control and lane keeping system. Especially, the proposed method is also able to deal with the LIDAR data and makes decisions in complex multi-lane highways and multi-agent environments.