Byzantine-Resilient Federated Machine Learning via Over-the-Air Computation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a communication-efficient, robust federated learning scheme for wireless networks that resists Byzantine attacks by using over-the-air computation and a geometric median aggregation method.

Contribution

It proposes a novel over-the-air computation scheme employing the Weiszfeld algorithm for Byzantine-resilient model aggregation in wireless federated learning.

Findings

Demonstrates robustness against Byzantine devices.

Achieves efficient communication via AirComp.

Maintains good learning performance.

Abstract

Federated learning (FL) is recognized as a key enabling technology to provide intelligent services for future wireless networks and industrial systems with delay and privacy guarantees. However, the performance of wireless FL can be significantly degraded by Byzantine attack, such as data poisoning attack, model poisoning attack and free-riding attack. To design the Byzantine-resilient FL paradigm in wireless networks with limited radio resources, we propose a novel communication-efficient robust model aggregation scheme via over-the-air computation (AirComp). This is achieved by applying the Weiszfeld algorithm to obtain the smoothed geometric median aggregation against Byzantine attack. The additive structure of the Weiszfeld algorithm is further leveraged to match the signal superposition property of multiple-access channels via AirComp, thereby expediting the communication-efficient secure aggregation process of FL. Numerical results demonstrate the robustness against Byzantine devices and good learning performance of the proposed approach.