FedHealthFog: A federated learning-enabled approach towards healthcare analytics over fog computing platform

Abstract

The emergence of federated learning (FL) technique in fog-enabled healthcare system has leveraged enhanced privacy towards safeguarding sensitive patient information over heterogeneous computing platforms. In this paper, we introduce the FedHealthFog framework, which was meticulously developed to overcome the difficulties of distributed learning in resource-constrained IoT-enabled healthcare systems, particularly those sensitive to delays and energy efficiency. Conventional federated learning approaches face challenges stemming from substantial compute requirements and significant communication costs. This is primarily due to their reliance on a singular server for the aggregation of global data, which results in inefficient training models. We present a transformational approach to address these problems by elevating strategically placed fog nodes to the position of local aggregators within the federated learning architecture. A sophisticated greedy heuristic technique is used to optimize the choice of a fog node as the global aggregator in each communication cycle between edge devices and the cloud. The FedHealthFog system notably accounts for drop in communication latency of 87.01%, 26.90%, and 71.74%, and energy consumption of 57.98%, 34.36%, and 35.37% respectively, for three benchmark algorithms analyzed in this study. The effectiveness of FedHealthFog is strongly supported by outcomes of our experiments compared to cutting-edge alternatives while simultaneously reducing number of global aggregation cycles. These findings highlight FedHealthFog's potential to transform federated learning in resource-constrained IoT environments for delay-sensitive applications.

Keywords

• Federated learning
• Healthcare
• Fog computing
• Performance evaluation
• Latency
• Energy efficiency