ACCEPTED FROM OPEN CALL
UAV-assisted Communication Efficient Federated Learning in the Era of the Artificial
Intelligence of Things
Wei Yang Bryan Lim, Sahil Garg, Zehui Xiong, Yang Zhang, Dusit Niyato, Cyril Leung, and Chunyan Miao
Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) based models are
increasingly deployed in the Internet of Things
(IoT), paving the evolution of the IoT into the
AI of things (AIoT). Currently, the predominant
approach for AI model training is cloud-centric
and involves the sharing of data with external par-
ties. To preserve privacy while enabling collabora-
tive model training across distributed IoT devices,
the machine learning paradigm called Federated
Learning (FL) has been proposed. The future FL
network is envisioned to involve up to millions
of distributed IoT devices involved in collabora-
tive learning. However, communication failures
and dropouts by nodes can lead to inefficient FL.
Inspired by the UAV-assisted communications in
5G heterogeneous networks (HetNet), we pro-
pose the UAV-assisted FL in this article. The FL
model owner may employ UAVs to provide the
intermediate model aggregation in the sky and
mobile relay of the updated model parameters
from data owners to the model owner. This there-
fore increases the reach of FL to data owners that
face uncertain network conditions and improves
the communication efficiency. To incentivize the
UAV service providers, we adopt the multi-di-
mensional contract incentive design as a case
study. The incentive compatibility of the contract
ensures that the UAVs only choose an incentive
package corresponding to its type, for example,
traveling cost. The simulation results show that
the UAV-assisted FL achieves significant improve-
ment in communication efficiency and validates
the incentive compatibility of our contract design.
Introduction
The recent advances of the Internet of Things (IoT),
Artificial Intelligence (AI), and communication tech-
nologies are gradually paving the evolution of the
IoT into the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT). In
particular, the enhanced perception capabilities of
IoT devices enable a wealth of data to be collected.
Coupled with the advent of 5G communications,
a seamlessly connected network of AI-empowered
IoT devices is enabled to bring intelligence to both
consumers and industrial end users.
Currently, the predominant approach for AI
model training is cloud-centric, that is, the IoT
devices transmit the training data to a distant cloud
Wei Yang Bryan Lim, Dusit Niyato, and Chunyan Miao are with Nanyang Technological University (NTU); Sahil Garg is with the Université du Québec;
Digital Object Identifier: Zehui Xiong is with Singapore University of Technology and Design, Yang Zhang (corresponding author) is with Nanjing University of
10.1109/MNET.002.2000334 Aeronautics and Astronautics; Cyril Leung is with The University of British Columbia.
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server for processing. However, this is no longer
sustainable due to the following reasons. First,
privacy laws, for example, the General Data Pro-
tection Regulation (GDPR) [1], are increasingly
stringent. In addition, the increasingly privacy-sen-
sitive data owners can opt out of data sharing with
third-parties. Second, the transfer of massive quan-
tities of data to the distant cloud burdens the net-
works and incurs unacceptable latency especially
for time-sensitive tasks. This potentially impedes the
further development of the AIoT.
In the face of these challenges, Federated
Learning (FL) has first been proposed in [2]. In
each iteration of FL, a model owner transmits a
set of model parameters to each data owner, for
example, IoT devices. Then, the model parame-
ters are updated with the locally stored training
data. Only the updated model parameters, rather
than the raw data, need to be transmitted back to
the model owner for global aggregation. The FL
training process thus enables privacy preserving
collaborative machine learning.
However, the communication inefficiency
remains a key bottleneck in FL. The FL network
can involve thousands of distributed IoT devices.
The communication cost thus often dominates the
computation cost. In addition, node failures and
device dropouts due to communication failures
can lead to inefficient FL, for example, in terms of
lower model accuracy or slower convergence. As
such, it is of paramount importance to improve
the communication efficiency of FL. Few solutions
exist to improve the communication efficiency in
FL, for example, worker selection protocols and
compression techniques [3]. However, they do
not well-address the issue. For example, data own-
ers with severely limited network access are still
unable to participate in the FL process.
Inspired by recent advancements in the
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) assisted commu-
nications as part of the 5G heterogeneous networks
(HetNets) [4], we propose UAV-assisted commu-
nication for FL in this article. To improve the com-
munication efficiency, the FL model owners can
employ the third-party UAV service providers, for
example, Drones-as-a-Service (DaaS), to provide
network coverage and relay support from the sky,
thereby increasing the reach to more devices and
reducing the device dropout rate during training.
However, there exist various UAV types in the mar-
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 IoT
2. Transmission
1. Local model training
2. Transmission
1. Local model training
IoT
FIGURE 1. The FL working process. The model training is conducted locally. Then, only the model parameters
are subsequently exchanged for aggregation.
ket, for example, different in terms of mobility and
communication capabilities. The types are hidden
from the model owner amid information asymmetry,
that is, the DaaS providers may misreport their UAV
types to achieve greater rewards for their services.
As such, to appropriately incentivize the DaaS pro-
viders, we leverage the multi-dimensional contract
theoretic incentive mechanism design. The incentive
compatibility of the contract ensures that each DaaS
provider only selects the contract corresponding
to its actual type, thus ensuring profit maximization
amid information asymmetry. The contributions of
this article is as follows:
• We provide a tutorial of the fundamentals of
FL. Then, we review the communication relat-
ed issues and existing solutions proposed to
improve the communication efficiency.
• We provide an overview of the issues and
applications related to UAV-assisted commu-
nication in 5G HetNet. Then, we propose
the UAV-assisted communication efficient FL.
• We develop the multi-dimensional con-
tract-matching incentive mechanism design
to reward the DaaS providers amid informa-
tion asymmetry.
fundAmentAls of federAted leArnIng
federAted leArnIng
The two main entities in the FL system are the data
owners and model owners (Fig. 1). The data own-
ers, hereinafter workers, each own a private dataset
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IoT
3. Aggregation 2. Transmission
1. Local model training
2. Transmission
1. Local model training
IoT
aggregated through IoT sensing, for example, tem-
perature readings or images. Note that these private
data may not be willingly shared with the model
owner or among other workers. On one hand, the
other workers may be competitors, for example, in
the case of industrial applications. On the other hand,
the model owner may be a third-party developer of
AI applications with no affiliations to the data owners.
In the FL process, the model owner first trans-
mits a set of model parameters to each worker.
This set of parameters may be randomized, or
may comprise parameters from a previous train-
ing round. The FL process consists of a number
of iterations, each of which consists of three main
steps as shown in Fig. 1:
1. Local Model Training: The worker trains the
received model using the local sensing data,
for example, through the Stochastic Gradient
Descent to minimize a local loss function.
2. Wireless Transmission: The worker transmits
the updated local parameters to the model
owner.
3. Global Parameter Update: The local parame-
ter updates from all workers are aggregated
and averaged in the case of the conventional
Federated Averaging algorithm [2].
After Step 3, the model parameters are trans-
mitted back to the worker for the next iteration of
training. The process continues until a desired test
accuracy is achieved.
In fact, Step 3 of each iteration is usually con-
ducted in a synchronous manner, that is, the glob-
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 al parameter update is conducted only after all
workers have completed the local model training.
In contrast, an asynchronous aggregation implies
that the global parameter is updated whenever
the model owner receives a set of local param-
eter updates from a worker. Though the asyn-
chronous scheme enables workers to join while
a training round is in progress, there have been
convergence issues. As such, most studies of FL
presently adopt the synchronous scheme.
Applications of Federated Learning
The main advantages of FL are as follows:
• FL enables privacy preserving collaborative
machine learning.
• FL leverages the computation capabilities of end
IoT devices for local model training, thus reduc-
ing the computation workload of the cloud.
• Model parameters are usually smaller in size
than raw data, thus alleviating the burden on
backbone communication networks.
This has enabled several practical applications of FL.
Mobile Keyboard Prediction: The next-word-
prediction model of Gboard (gboard.app.goo.gl/
get), developed by Google, has been successfully
trained using FL. This ensures that sensitive data,
for example, user text messages, do not need to
be shared with a third-party server.
Healthcare: Nvidia Clara FL (https://blogs.nvid-
ia.com/blog/2019/12/01/clara-federated-learn-
ing/) has been exploring the use of FL to enable
collaborative learning across multiple hospitals.
This guarantees that the sensitive data of patients
remain kept in the local servers of hospitals.
Finance: WeBank FedAI (https://www.fedai.
org/) has explored the use of FL to enable collab-
oration across financial institutions while adher-
ing to user privacy protection regulations in the
finance industry.
Recommender System: To serve the interests
of users while meeting privacy laws, several stud-
ies have also explored the use of FL to build rec-
ommender systems. The comprehensive interest
profile of a user group can be derived across plat-
forms for e-commerce, such as Taobao, to enter-
tainment applications such as YouTube.
Internet of Flying Things: UAVs are increas-
ingly utilized in smart city applications (https://
spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sens-
ing/uavs-prove-usefuldelivering-remote-pow-
er-charging-services) [5], for example, to enable
data collection or for package delivery. Recent
studies have proposed the use of FL for the coor-
dination of independently owned UAV swarms or
for FL model training using UAV sensing data [6].
The FL network for the above applications can
potentially involve up to millions of distributed IoT
devices, each with heterogeneous network condi-
tions and communication capabilities. As such, it
is of paramount importance to improve the com-
munication efficiency in FL.
Communication Efficiency in
Federated Learning
Communication Issues in FL
In distributed learning schemes such as FL, the
communication cost often dominates the compu-
tation cost. In addition, the downlink speed of IoT
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devices exceeds that of the uplink speed. How-
ever, the model parameter updates have to be
transmitted to the model owner for aggregation
after local training. The delay in wireless transmis-
sion of complex, high-dimensional model updates
during the FL training process can lead to the
straggler effect. The synchronous FL global aggre-
gation only occurs after every worker’s parameter
update has been transmitted to the model owner.
This implies that each iteration of model training
only takes place as quickly as the slowest worker.
Besides the inefficiency in transmission of local
model updates, there exists a significant num-
ber of worker dropouts while training is taking
place due to network and communication fail-
ures. Moreover, the dropout frequencies are
time-correlated, that is, dropouts are more likely
to occur in the daytime, and be geographically
correlated, for example, workers from a poorly
connected region may have more limited band-
width and thus collectively have higher dropout
rates. The worker dropouts can lead to reduced
model accuracy given a decline in the number of
available training samples. The FL model may also
under-represent the data distribution from regions
with limited connectivity.
Review of Potential Solutions
In the following, we review the potential solutions
toward improving communication efficiency in FL.
Edge Computing: The edge computing par-
adigm utilizes the enhanced computation capa-
bilities of end devices and edge servers to bring
computation closer to where data is located, that
is, at the network edge. Solutions from edge com-
puting have been incorporated to solve the com-
munication issues in FL. The study in [2] proposes
that each worker can implement multiple rounds of
training passes over the local dataset before com-
munication for aggregation. This implies that more
local updates are computed before each round of
global communication, which reduces the number
of communication rounds required, at the expense
of increased computation expense on end devices.
Alternatively, the hierarchical FL [7] can be adopt-
ed, in which the workers do not communicate
directly with the model owner, that is, a distant
cloud server. Instead, the local parameters are first
communicated to edge servers for intermediate
aggregation. Then, communication with the model
owner is further established for global aggregation.
Besides reducing the instances of communication
with the distant servers of the model owner, this
relay reduces the dropout rate of devices.
Worker Selection Protocols: With the expecta-
tion of worker dropouts, several studies propose
the selection of an excess of the required number
of workers to participate in training. Moreover,
resource-aware worker selection algorithms are
proposed, for example, to select only workers
with reliable network connections or sufficient
energy capacity to complete the FL training. How-
ever, the study in [8] finds that the selection algo-
rithms that leave workers out, for example, as a
result of being geographically situated in an area
with limited bandwidth, can lead to “unfair” mod-
els that generalize poorly, that is, the models have
low accuracy when applied on test samples from
workers that are left out during training. As such,
a fairness-aware FL is proposed to assign higher
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 weights to the parameter updates from underrep-
resented workers.
Model Compression: To reduce communica-
tion cost, the study in [3] proposes the structured
and sketched updates that encode the model
updates from workers in a compressed form for
more efficient communication with the server,
which subsequently decodes the update. In addi-
tion, the quantization and subsampling approaches
are also proposed. In particular, the quantization
approach reduces the number of bits per param-
eter communicated whereas the subsampling
approach involves the selective communication
of only a random subset of the model parameters.
This reduces the size of model parameters required
to be uploaded to the model owner.
Multi-Access Bandwidth Allocation: The study
in [9] proposes the multi-access Broadband Ana-
log Aggregation (BAA) with over-the-air compu-
tation to reduce the communication latency in
FL through exploiting the signal superposition
property of a multi-access channel. The communi-
cation latency of the BAA transmission is indepen-
dent of the number of devices in the FL network,
and thus it enhances the scalability of the FL work-
ing process.
However, these existing solutions do not solve
the issue of communication inefficiency in FL suf-
ficiently. The edge computing inspired solutions,
for example, hierarchical FL, still require an edge
server, for example, base station, to be in close
proximity to the workers for intermediate aggre-
gation. Such a communication infrastructure can
be infeasible to establish, especially when the FL
training is not recurrent. Moreover, the cover-
age of the infrastructure may be reduced due to
shadowing effects. Even with model compression,
workers with severely limited connectivity are still
unable to participate in the FL training.
Naturally, these workers will be omitted by
worker selection algorithms due to their high
probability of dropout. The omission of such train-
ing samples during the FL training can cause a
deterioration in model performance, that is, the
model’s ability to generalize is affected. Though
the fairness-aware selection protocols may assign
higher weights to incorporate the parameter
updates from these underrepresented workers,
the communication inefficiency and high dropout
rates of workers with limited connectivity is still
unsolved. Therefore, we propose the UAV-assist-
ed FL as a solution in the following section.
UAV-Assisted Communication in
Federated Learning
Overview of UAV-Assisted Communication
In recent years, the studies regarding the subject
of UAV-assisted communication are increasingly
popular.
UAVs have two key advantages that increase
their appeal for utilization in wireless communica-
tions. First, UAVs are cheaper and more flexible
to deploy [10] as compared to terrestrial commu-
nication infrastructure or other high-altitude plat-
forms, for example, balloons [4]. UAVs are more
cost effective for ad-hoc, non-recurrent events
such as FL training. Second, UAVs are highly
mobile and can thus maneuver to establish line-
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of-sight (LOS) communication links with ground
devices, for example, mobile sensors and vehicles.
As such, the UAV-assisted wireless communica-
tions are used in several scenarios.
Network Coverage and Relay Support From
the Sky: To enable ubiquitous network coverage,
UAVs are envisioned to be part of 5G HetNets,
for example, to facilitate enhanced Mobile Broad-
band (eMBB) [11] or Ultra reliable low-latency
communication (URLLC) for time-sensitive tasks.
In addition, UAV-enabled mobile relaying can sig-
nificantly reduce link distances between ground
IoT devices and the distant cloud servers [4].
Caching and Computation Offloading in the
Sky: UAVs can serve as flying edge computing
platforms to provide caching and computation
offloading support for ground IoT devices with
limited computing capabilities. Dynamic cach-
ing can be provided to mobile devices at a lower
transmission latency [11].
Sensing from the Sky: In the “data ferry-
ing model,” the UAV travels to the data source,
receives the data, and subsequently travels clos-
er to the destination for data transmission. UAVs
can be deployed to conduct sensing itself, for
example, through their equipped sensors. How-
ever, due to the limited resources of UAVs and
their heterogeneity, the group of studies propose
to address different resource allocation issues in
UAV communications. Some approaches that are
related to FL are as follows.
Trajectory Optimization: In general, UAVs
expend the most energy resource on traveling,
that is, flying. As such, trajectory optimization
is of paramount importance to maximize route
coverage given onboard energy constraints. For
example, the study in [12] proposes the dynam-
ic programming (DP) and convex optimization
solution.
Efficient Deployment: Different UAVs have
different capabilities and characteristics, requiring
the matching of the most suitable UAV to per-
form varying tasks [6, 12]. Moreover, machine
learning techniques have been used for the pre-
dictive deployment of UAVs.
Spectrum Management: To perform commu-
nication functions efficiently, UAVs are required
to manage the spectrum efficiency well, that is, to
maximize throughput. However, this comes at the
cost of greater energy expense required to main-
tain shorter link distances with ground nodes .
Incentive Mechanism: It has been envisioned
that the DaaS providers will be increasingly
employed by network operators, for example, to
provide network coverage support during large-
scale events. To incentivize participation, an
incentive scheme has to be designed [13].
Inspired by the above studies, we propose the
UAV-assisted FL.
UAV-Assisted
Communication Efficient Federated Learning
We consider a system model (Fig. 2) in which
a model owner initiates an FL task with a group
of workers, for example, independent owners of
IoT devices. However, the workers may either
face unreliable network conditions and thus have
higher dropout rates, or the workers may have
insufficient transmit power to complete the wire-
less transmission of model updates effectively,
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 Model Transmission
UAV-assi sted FL wi thin subr egi on i nvolving th ree n odes
Aggregation

UAV Trajectory to collect node updates

Contract
ct Contract Contract

UAV-assisted edge aggregation

Transmission Node 1 Node 2 Node 3
Point

2(a): The UAV assisted FL with mobile relay in the sky 2(b): Multi-dimensional contract matching

FIGURE 2. The system model.

thus delaying the FL training process. As such, the Given the involvement of third-party DaaS
third-party DaaS providers, hereinafter UAVs, are providers, an incentive scheme has to be
employed by the model owner to provide net- designed to compensate the UAVs for task
work coverage and relay support from the sky. completion. However, there exist different UAV
The area in which the workers are situated is types with different traveling, computation, and
divided into subregions (Fig. 2b). Each of the sub- communication capabilities. These heteroge-
regions consists of a number of nodes in which a neous types are often the private information
subset of workers are situated. A UAV is deployed of the DaaS providers that are unknown to the
to serve each subregion. Each iteration of the model owner. In addition, the DaaS providers
UAV-assisted FL consists of the following steps may have an incentive to misreport their types
(Fig. 2a): to seek higher rewards. As such, we leverage the
Local Computation: At the beginning of each self-revealing mechanism of the contract theoret-
training round, the model owner transmits a set of ic incentive mechanism design.
parameters to the workers, that is, data owners.
Then, each worker conducts model training using
its local data. tHe multI-dImensIonAl
Edge Aggregation in the Sky: The UAV vis-
its selected workers to collect the updated local
contrAct-mAtcHIng desIgn
model parameters for intermediate aggregation. uAv And model owner utIlItIes
Mobile Relay: The aggregated parameters are UAV types related to the FL task completion are
transmitted from the UAV to the model owner as follows.
for global aggregation across all subregions. To Traveling Cost: UAVs are required to trav-
enable efficient wireless transmission to the model el to the subregion during the task, and visit
owner, the UAV travels to a transmission point the worker nodes for reception of parameter
which has favorable channel conditions for com- updates and then travel to a transmission point
munication with the model owner (Fig. 2a). for wireless relay to the model owner. The ener-
The benefits of the proposed UAV-assisted gy required for this process varies according to
FL are as follows. First, the flexible deployment the propulsion power expended for traveling.
of UAVs implies that model owners are able to The propulsion power [12] is determined by the
obtain the training inputs of workers that are geo- required power to balance the parasitic drag
graphically distant from terrestrial communication caused by skin friction, and drag force of air redi-
infrastructure. Second, UAVs have higher transmit rection. These factors are variable according to
power than individual IoT devices. This increases the reference area, wing aspect ratio, and weight
the speed of model updating. Third, UAVs are able of the UAV.
to conduct mobile relaying, that is, the link distance Computation Cost: The UAVs are required
of reception and transmission of the model param- to perform the intermediate aggregation of local
eters is reduced. As such, UAVs enable a more reli- model parameters. The energy required depends
able connection, thus reducing the worker dropout on the UAV computation capacity and cycles per
rates during the training. Moreover, the privacy bit for computing.
of the workers is preserved since the UAVs and Communication Cost: The varying communi-
model owner only receive the model updates, rath- cation cost incurred by the UAV depends on the
er than the raw data of the workers. bandwidth allocation and transmission power.

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 Note that each UAV type is characterized by the
minimum energy required to cover a proportion of
nodes, in terms of the propulsion power, compu-
tation energy, and transmission power required by
the UAV to complete the task within the stipulated
time constraint. The UAV types are often the private
knowledge unknown to the model owner.
On the other hand, the profit of the model
owner is the revenue gains from FL model accu-
racy minus incentive expense. FL model accuracy
is assumed to be a concave function [14] of the
aggregate training data collected, that is, to reflect
that the profit increases at a diminishing rate
when more worker nodes are covered. As such,
to maximize profit, a model owner should select
UAVs with the lowest marginal cost of node cov-
erage to cover the most number of nodes.
Multi-Dimensional Contract Design
We utilize the contract theory to design node
coverage-reward contract pairs that correspond
to different UAV types in the market (Fig. 2b). A
contract is feasible if it fulfills two conditions:
• Individual rationality (IR): Each UAV type
achieves non-negative utility if it chooses the
contract item designed for its type.
• Incentive compatibility (IC): Each UAV type
achieves maximum utility if it chooses the
contract item designed for its type.
In particular, the IR constraint guarantees participa-
tion of the UAVs, whereas the IC constraint ensures
self-revelation, that is, the UAVs have no incentive to
misreport their types amid information asymmetry.
In conventional contract theory studies, it is
usually assumed that the worker type is one-di-
mensional. In the case of UAVs, there are multiple
dimensions of variations in types to be consid-
ered. To solve this challenge, we first sort the UAV
types according to an auxiliary, one-dimensional
variable to collectively reflect the marginal cost
of node coverage. Then, we derive the necessary
conditions for the contract feasibility as follows:
• For the optimal contract, the node coverage
is higher if and only if the corresponding
rewards are higher.
• The UAV with the lower marginal cost of
node coverage will cover a greater propor-
tion of the worker nodes.
For the first condition, the UAVs should only
cover a greater proportion of nodes if and only if it
can receive a higher reward. The second condition
is the monotonic condition of the contract, which
is in line with the IC constraints of the contract.
In particular, a UAV with lower marginal cost of
node coverage will not choose the contract bundle
designed for high cost UAVs even though the bun-
dle involves a lower proportion of nodes to be cov-
ered, given that it is able to derive higher rewards if
it chooses the contract designed for its type.
However, the IC and IR constraints involved
are still numerous and non-convex in nature. As
such, procedures [6] to relax the constraints have
to be implemented to derive the set of sufficient
conditions. With that, we are able to solve for the
optimal contract pairs.
UAV-Subregion Assignment
With the optimal contract bundles derived, the
model owner has the knowledge of the hidden
UAV types. For each subregion, the UAV declares
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the proportion of the nodes it is able to cover
based on the contract bundle it selected. Besides
contract rewards for covering the proportion of
nodes, the UAVs are also granted an addition-
al fixed reward for traveling to the node, which
is separate from the contractual reward since
it does not vary with node coverage. Note that
there may be more than one UAV which prefers
to serve a subregion which is situated closer to
the UAVs’ bases. Likewise, there may be more
than one subregion which prefers a UAV that can
cover a greater proportion of nodes.
As such, the Gale-Shapley (GS) matching algo-
rithm is applied to assign the UAV to each subre-
gion based on preferences. Before matching, we
first derive the list of preferences for each subre-
gion (decided by the model owner) and the UAV.
The matching procedure is as follows.
Initialization: The model owner announc-
es the contract bundles to the UAVs. Then, the
UAVs pick the contract bundles that best reflect
their types. A preference list is constructed for
both the UAVs and subregions, in which the
UAVs rank the subregions and vice versa. Then, a
list of unmatched subregions is initialized.
Iterative Matching: In each iteration, a subre-
gion that is still currently unmatched proposes to
its most preferred UAV.
If the UAV has not already been assigned
to a subregion, the proposal is accepted. If the
UAV has already been assigned to a subregion,
the prevailing subregion and the new proposal is
compared. There exist two separate scenarios for
consideration:
• If the prevailing subregion is preferred, the
new proposal is rejected. Then, the UAV is
removed from the preference list of the pro-
posing subregion.
• If the proposing subregion is preferred, the
prevailing subregion is rejected and added
into the pool of unmatched subregion. Fur-
thermore, the UAV is removed from the
preference list of the newly rejected subre-
gion.
Note that the removal of rejected UAVs from
the preference lists of subregions ensures that no
subregion proposes to the same UAV twice. The
GS algorithm has been proven to achieve stability
and optimality in matching outcomes [12].
Performance Evaluation
Following the empirical findings in [14], we use
the logarithmic function to model the relation-
ship between number of workers participating in
FL training, probability of device dropouts, and
model owner profit derived from the model accu-
racy. In particular, we consider a range between
500 and 1000 workers each assumed to own the
same data quantities, and a dropout rate of 0 per-
cent to 50 percent. Figure 3 shows that as the
number of workers increases and dropout rates
fall, the model owner profit increases. The rea-
son is that there is an increase in training samples
available, which contributes to an improvement in
model accuracy. As such, the UAV-assisted FL can
increase the model owner profit since it is able
to reach out to more workers without a reliable
network connection. In addition, the network and
relay support that the UAV provides can reduce
the device dropout probability.
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FIGURE 3. Relationship between model owner profit, number of workers, and
dropout rate.
Besides, the UAV assisted FL aids in commu-
nication latency reduction. As an illustration, we
consider five UAV types with the descending
order of transmission power, bandwidth, and
channel gain, that is, type 1 UAV has the most
favorable conditions for transmission to the
model owner. An IoT device with a fixed set of
values of transmission power, bandwidth, and
channel gain is also considered for comparison.
The simulations are then conducted with refer-
ence from commonly used parameters. In Fig. 4,
the communication time required by the UAVs
and IoT device to transmit a 100MB model
update to the model owner is plotted. Even with-
out considering dropout probability, it is clear
that the UAV transmission is much faster than
that of the IoT device.
To illustrate the optimality of our contract
design, we consider the case of six UAVs and
six subregions. The UAVs are arranged based
on the marginal cost of node coverage in
ascending order, with type 1 UAV, hereinafter
“type 1,” incurring the lowest marginal cost per
proportion of nodes covered. Moreover, the
UAV bases and subregions are situated at differ-
ent coordinates.
In Fig. 5, each UAV type is assumed to take
on the contract items designed for each of the
six types, that is, marginal cost of node coverage.
Then, the utility of the UAV is computed. We
observe that type 6 achieves non-negative utility
when it chooses the contract item designed for its
type, that is, type 6 contract. In contrast, if type 6
chooses contract items designed for other types,
it achieves negative utility. This validates that our
contract satisfies the IC constraints. Moreover, the
satisfaction of the IR constraint is also validated,
given that all UAVs achieve non-negative utilities
when they choose the contract designed for their
types.
After each UAV type is known to the model
owner, the UAV has to be matched to the sub-
region. For ease of exposition, we assume that
each subregion has the same number of work-
er nodes and data quantity. In Fig. 6, we show
the coordinates of the UAVs and subregions. The
subregions are denoted n whereas the UAVs are
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FIGURE 4. Wireless transmission latency for UAV-as-
sisted FL vs. non UAV-assisted.
FIGURE 5. Utility for each UAV type vs. contract
items.
denoted j. The UAVs naturally prefer the subre-
gions that are closer to their bases due to greater
gains from the fixed rewards portion. For exam-
ple, type 1 prefers subregion 6 to subregion 1.
Similarly, type 2 prefers subregion 6 to subregion
1. Given this conflict in preferences, we adopt the
GS algorithm discussed earlier for the UAV-subre-
gion assignment.
The match between the UAV and subregions
is derived and represented by the dotted lines
in Fig. 6, for example, subregion 6 is matched to
type 1. Though type 2 also prefers subregion 6, it
is unable to be matched to the subregion given
that type 1 is higher up on the list of preferences
of subregion 6. As such, type 2 is matched to the
second closest subregion 1. Similarly, type 6 is
matched to one of its least favored preferences,
that is, subregion 4, given that the other subre-
gions have been matched to the more favored
UAVs.
The illustration in this section validates the con-
vergence and stability of the proposed matching
algorithm. Together with the IC constraints of the
contract, we can ensure that the UAVs are effi-
ciently matched to the subregion based on the
truthful reporting of their types.
IEEE Network • September/October 2021
10/22/21 10:18 PM
 conclusIon
In this article, we discuss the issues of communi-
cation efficiency in FL and present potential solu-
tions. The UAV-assisted communication efficient
FL is then proposed. To reward the DaaS provid-
ers, we propose the multi-dimensional contract
matching incentive scheme. The simulation results
validate the communication efficiency of the
UAV-assisted FL, and the incentive compatibility
of our contract incentive design.
For future work, we aim to incorporate the
mobility of workers into the system model where
workers may move from one subregion to the
next, thus leading to dynamic variations of data
quantity, communication, and computation work-
loads in the subregion. Moreover, we aim to
study the wireless charging techniques with ener-
gy harvesting [15] for UAVs, as well as scheduling
for the efficient FL in the sky.
AcKnowledgment
This research is supported in part by Alibaba
Group through the Alibaba Innovative Research
(AIR) Program and Alibaba-NTU Singapore
Joint Research Institute (JRI); by the National
Research Foundation, Singapore, under its AI
Singapore Programme (AISG Award No: AISG2-
RP-2020-019 and AISG-GC-2019-003); by WASP/
NTU grant M4082187 (4080); by the Singapore
Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1 (RG16/20);
by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No. 62071343); and by SUTD
SRG-ISTD-2021-165. Any opinions, findings and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this material are those of the authors and do not
reflect the views of the National Research Foun-
dation, Singapore.
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BIOGRAPHIES
WEI YANG BRYAN LIM is currently an Alibaba Ph.D. candidate
with the Alibaba Group and Alibaba-NTU Joint Research Insti-
tute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
S AHIL G ARG is currently a research fellow with the Electrical
Engineering Department, École de Technologie Supérieure, Uni-
versité du Québec, Montréal, Canada.
ZEHUI XIONG is currently an assistant professor in the Pillar of
Information Systems Technology and Design, Singapore Univer-
sity of Technology and Design. Prior to that, he was a researcher
with the Alibaba-NTU Joint Research Institute, Singapore. He
received the Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological Univer-
sity, Singapore.
YANG ZHANG is currently an associate professor with the Col-
lege of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University
of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China. He obtained a Ph.D.
degree in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological
University (NTU), Singapore, in 2015.
DUSIT NIYATO [F] is currently a professor in the School of Com-
puter Science and Engineering and, by courtesy, the School of
Physical & Mathematical Sciences, at the Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore. He has published more than 380 technical
papers in the area of wireless and mobile networking, and is an
inventor of four U.S. and German patents. He was named a 2017,
2018, and 2019 highly cited researcher in computer science.
CYRIL LEUNG has been with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia (UBC),
Vancouver, Canada, since 1980, where he is a professor and
currently holds the PMC-Sierra Professorship in Networking and
Communications.
CHUNYAN MIAO is currently a professor in the School of Com-
puter Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity (NTU), and the director of the Joint NTU-UBC Research
Centre of Excellence in Active Living for the Elderly (LILY).
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