Federated Computing -- Survey on Building Blocks, Extensions and Systems
It addresses the need for a unified framework in FC to support privacy-preserving collaborative processing, which is incremental as it synthesizes existing research.
This survey tackles the lack of clear definitions and taxonomies in Federated Computing (FC) systems by analyzing over 150 papers to distill their underlying structure, including building blocks, extensions, and differences between Federated Learning and Federated Analytics.
In response to the increasing volume and sensitivity of data, traditional centralized computing models face challenges, such as data security breaches and regulatory hurdles. Federated Computing (FC) addresses these concerns by enabling collaborative processing without compromising individual data privacy. This is achieved through a decentralized network of devices, each retaining control over its data, while participating in collective computations. The motivation behind FC extends beyond technical considerations to encompass societal implications. As the need for responsible AI and ethical data practices intensifies, FC aligns with the principles of user empowerment and data sovereignty. FC comprises of Federated Learning (FL) and Federated Analytics (FA). FC systems became more complex over time and they currently lack a clear definition and taxonomy describing its moving pieces. Current surveys capture domain-specific FL use cases, describe individual components in an FC pipeline individually or decoupled from each other, or provide a quantitative overview of the number of published papers. This work surveys more than 150 papers to distill the underlying structure of FC systems with their basic building blocks, extensions, architecture, environment, and motivation. We capture FL and FA systems individually and point out unique difference between those two.