2025/05/14 by Harikrishna Kuttivelil, Kuttivelil, Harikrishna, Katia Obraczka +1
Computer Science · #Emerging Technologies (cs.ET) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #IoT and Edge/Fog Computing #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Multiagent Systems (cs.MA) #Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks #Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.09854
openalex publication_date 2025/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
As end-user device capability increases and demand for intelligent services at the Internet's edge rises, distributed learning has emerged as a key enabling technology for the intelligent edge. Existing approaches like federated learning (FL) and decentralized FL (DFL) enable privacy-preserving distributed learning among clients, while gossip learning (GL) approaches have emerged to address the potential challenges in resource-constrained, connectivity-challenged infrastructure-less environments. However, most distributed learning approaches assume largely homogeneous data distributions and may not consider or exploit the heterogeneity of clients and their underlying data distributions. This paper introduces Chisme, a novel fully decentralized distributed learning algorithm designed to address the challenges of implementing robust intelligence in network edge contexts characterized by heterogeneous data distributions, episodic connectivity, and sparse network infrastructure or lack thereof. Chisme leverages the affinity between clients' underlying data distributions calculated from received model exchanges to inform how much influence received models have when merging into the local model. By doing so, it enables clients to strategically balance between broader collaboration to build more general knowledge and more selective collaboration to build specific knowledge. We evaluate Chisme against contemporary approaches using image recognition and time-series prediction scenarios while considering different network connectivity conditions, representative of real-world distributed intelligent systems running at the network's edge. Our experiments demonstrate that Chisme outperforms state-of-the-art edge intelligence approaches in almost every case -- clients using Chisme exhibit faster training convergence, lower final loss after training, and lower performance disparity between clients.