2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)
Joint Selection of Local Trainers and Resource
Allocation for Federated Learning in Open RAN
Intelligent Controllers
2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) | 978-1-6654-4266-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/WCNC51071.2022.9771700
Amardip Kumar Singh, Kim Khoa Nguyen
Synchromedia Lab , École de Technologie Supérieure, Montreal, Canada
amardip-kumar.singh.1@ens.etsmtl.ca, kim-khoa.nguyen@etsmtl.ca
Abstract—Recently, Federated Learning (FL) has been applied
in various research domains specially because of its privacy pre-
serving and decentralized approach of model training. However,
very few FL applications have been developed for the Radio
Access Network (RAN) due to the lack of efficient deployment
models. Open RAN (O-RAN) promises a high standard of
meeting 5G services through its disaggregated, hierarchical, and
distributed network function processing framework. Moreover, it
comes with built-in intelligent controllers to instill smart decision
making ability into RAN. In this paper, we propose a framework
named O-RANFed to deploy and optimize FL tasks in O-RAN
to provide 5G slicing services. To improve the performance of
FL we formulate a joint mathematical optimization model of
local learners selection and resource allocation to perform model
training in every iteration. We solve this non-convex problem
using the decomposition method. First, we propose a slicing based
and deadline aware client selection algorithm. Then, we solve the
reduced resource allocation problem by using successive convex
approximation (SCA) method. Our simulation results show the
proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art FL methods
such as FedAvg and FedProx in terms of convergence, learning
time, and resource costs.
Index Terms—Federated Learning, O-RAN, 5G, Resource
Allocation, RAN Intelligent Controller, Network Slicing, RIC
I. I NTRODUCTION
Federated Learning (FL) is a new approach fusing the
concepts of distributed computing and Artificial Intelligence
[1]. Unlike the traditional machine learning in which models
are trained on a centralized data set, FL does not require the
data sets to be located at one central point. It collaborates with
the local computing nodes through a global aggregation point
by transferring only the model update vectors in a periodic
communication mode. Therefore, it respects the privacy of
the local data set, distributes the burden of computing, and
still train a centralized model [1]. These features enable
many applications of FL in edge computing where users’
devices serve as local trainers. However, it is yet to be well
investigated in carriers’ networks due to the lack of a standard
implementation model. The characteristics of FL pave way for
its uses in the domain of 5G RAN, particularly to enhance the
radio resource management policies [2].
5G network services promise to deliver ever fast and reliable
user experience that too on a massive scale. This comes with
a burden on improvements in how the access network is
managed. Using the operational and maintenance data that is
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978-1-6654-4266-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
collected periodically, RAN performance can be improved by
incorporating AI capabilities. O-RAN is a newly introduced
radio access network architectural framework that supports
different use cases of 5G services through network slicing and
disaggregation. The key element of O-RAN is its intelligent
controllers (RICs) that monitor and support the guaranteed per-
formance for different slice user groups [3]. On the other hand,
O-RAN operates on multi-vendor and shared resource system.
Therefore, it has to function under minimal resource cost and
yet with guaranteed service delivery. These constraints impose
heavy challenges posed for the O-RAN RICs.
In this paper, we investigate the possibility of FL model
training in O-RAN to provide 5G slicing services. 5G services
are governed by slicing of the physical network into several
logical isolated self-adaptable networks hosted by general
processors located at cloud-based data centres [4]. 5G defines
three classes of services based on their quality of services
(QoS) metrics: ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication
(uRLLC), extreme Mobile Broad Band (eMBB), and massive
Machine Type Communications (mMTC). Accordingly, the
physical RAN infrastructure is also divided into three logi-
cal slices of network elements that are assigned and main-
tained dynamically [1]. The two kinds of O-RAN Intelligent
Controllers namely, near-realtime RAN Intelligent Controller
(near-RT-RIC) and Non-RT-RIC coordinate with each other to
select the slice specific local training points and then train the
FL models.
In Fig. 1, we map the FL framework via RICs’ specifications
of O-RAN [5]. The slice operational data is collected and
saved into distributed databases through E2 interface. O1 inter-
face transfers data to near RT-RICs for local processing. The
interaction of FL parameters is enabled by the A1 interface
between Non-RT-RIC and near-RT-RICs. Since the FL tasks
are distributed over edge cloud sites in O-RAN RICs, and
shared by various operators, resources required to facilitate this
learning process need to be optimized. In addition, FL model is
trained iteratively, therefore learning time is also an issue. Due
to the stochastic nature of this distributed learning process,
minimizing the learning time while guaranteeing the accuracy
of the global model is challenging. Hence, the resource usage
cost reduction and FL time minimization should be dealt
together for the O-RAN intelligent controllers.
A plethora of recent works have focused on the adaptive
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Service & Management Orchestration Functions II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
ML Model
O1 Non-RT-RIC Host O2 uRLLC Consider an O-RAN system with a single regional cloud and
slice
Local model
update vector A1
Global model
aggregated vector eMBB
a set M of M distributed edges cooperatively performing an
broadcast
uploading slice
ML Model Application FL algorithm. In this FL setup, each edge cloud uses its locally
mMTC
Near- Near-
Near-
Near-
Near-
near-
RT-RIC
Near-
near-
RT-RIC
RT-RIC
Near-
near-
RT-RIC
slice collected training data to train a local FL model. The Non-
RT-RIC
RT-RIC RT-RIC RT-RIC
RT-RIC
RT-RIC
E2 RT-RIC at the regional cloud integrates the local FL models
RAN Data Analytics & AI Platform
from participating edge clouds and generates an aggregated FL
Data
Data
Data
Data Base
Base Data
Data
Data Base
Base Data
Data
Data Base
Base
model. This aggregated FL model is further used to improve
O1 Base Base Base
Base
E2 E2 E2 local FL models of each near-RT-RIC enabling the local
O-CU-CP O-CU-CP O-CU-CP models to collaboratively perform a learning algorithm without
E1 E1 E1 transferring its training data. We call this aggregated FL model
O-CU-UP O-CU-UP O-CU-UP

F1 F1
O-DU O-DU
O-RU O-RU
Fig. 1. Federated Learning set-up for O-RAN Intelligent Controllers
optimization of FL under communication constrained edge
computing. Prior work in [6], [7] and [8] have investigated
different resource constrained federated learning approaches.
Their objective is to minimize the energy usage of edge
devices involved in FL training by allocating optimal trans-
mission power. The work in [8] is too general and can only
be implemented in a single edge (with a single base station)
and cannot be used for a carrier network of multiple edges.
Moreover, the problem of resource allocation from the per-
spective of the System Management and Orchestration (SMO),
which is important for O-RAN, has not been considered so
far. In this paper, we have taken into account new parameters
of O-RAN architecture to design an algorithm to select local
trainers, then allocate resources for the selected trainers, and
propose an aggregation method. Our contributions in this paper
can be summarized as below:
• A mathematical formulation of the joint optimal resource
allocation and local trainers’ selection problem for the O-
RANFed learning tasks. Then, we propose a solution for
this non-convex optimization problem using the decom-
position method.
• An O-RAN slicing based and deadline aware algorithm
to select representative instances of near-RT-RIC as local
model participants in each global iteration of FL.
• A FL algorithm, so called O-RANFed, for O-RAN slicing
services where near RT-RIC hosts the local training
instances and Non-RT-RIC hosts the global aggregation
point of the ML model.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work proposed
to optimize ML training through federated settings in O-
RAN. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, the system model and the problem formulation are
presented. In Section III, we describe our proposed solution
approach. In Section IV, we present the numerical results to
evaluate the performance of our proposed solution. Finally, we
conclude the paper and discuss our future work.
F1
generated by using the local FL models as the global FL
O-DU model. As illustrated in Fig. 1, the uplink from near-RT-RICs
O-RU
to the Non-RT-RIC is used to send the local FL model update
parameters and the downlink is used to broadcast the global
FL model in global rounds of the training.
A. The Learning Model
In this model, each near-RT-RIC collects a dataset Di =
[xi,1 , ....., xi,Si ] of input data where Si is the number of the
input samples collected by near-RT-RIC i and each element xis
is the FL model’s input vector. Let yis be the output of xis . For
simplicity, we consider an FL model with single output, which
can be readily generalized to a case with multiple outputs. The
output data vector for training the FL model of near-RT-RIC i
is yi = [yi,1 , ....., yi,Si ]. We assume that the data collected by
each near-RT-RIC is different from the other near-RT-RICs
i.e. (xi 6= xj ; i 6= j, i, j ∈ M). So, each local trainer
will train the model using a different dataset. This is in line
with the real scenario as each local near-RT-RIC collects the
operational data from the corresponding slice specific users.
We define a vector gi to capture the parameters related to the
local FL model that is trained by Si and yi . gi determines
the local FL model of each near-RT-RIC i. For example, in a
linear regression prediction algorithm, xi mT .yi represents the
output, and gi determines the prediction accuracy. The training
process of an FL model is done in a way to solve:
M Si
1 XX
min f (gi , xis , yis ) (1)
g1 ,......,gM S i=1 s=1
s.t. g1 = g2 = ..... = gM = g ∀i ∈ M (1a)
PM
where S = i=1 Si is the total size of training data of
all near-RT-RICs. g is the global FL model generated by
the Non-RT-RIC and f (gi , xis , yis ) is a loss function that
captures the FL prediction accuracy. Different FL algorithms
use different loss functions. Constraint (1a) ensures that, once
the FL model converges, all of the near-RT-RICs and the Non-
RT-RIC will transmit the parameters g of the global FL model
to its connected near-RT-RICs so that they train their local FL
models. Then the near-RT-RICs will transmit their local FL
models to the Non-RT-RIC to update the global FL model. The
update of each near-RT-RIC i’s local FL model gi depends on
all near-RT-RICs’ local FL models. The update of the local FL
model gi depends on the learning algorithm. For example, one
can use gradient descent or randomized coordinate descent to

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 2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

update the local FL model. The update of the global model g C. FL Accuracy Model
is given by: The target for each of these local models is to attain a
M θ  (0, 1) level of accuracy, defined as below:
X Si .gi
g= . (2)
i=1
S t
||∇fm t
(gm t
)|| ≤ θ||∇fm t−1
(gm )||, ∀ m  {1, 2, 3, .., M } (5)

Since, we are considering wireless transmissions through A1
interface between near-RT-RICs and the Non-RT-RIC [5],
there is a resource constraint on the communication model
which in turn affects the performance of FL learning algo-
rithm. Therefore, we need to jointly consider these two aspects.
A near-RT-RIC takes several iterations, called local iterations,
to attain this accuracy. In the global model placed at the non-
RT-RIC, the target is to attain the optimal model weights to
reach  level of global accuracy, defined as below:
|F (g t ) − F (g)| ≤  ∀ t ≥ T (6)

B. FL Resource Model
In each global interaction, the O-RAN system has to decide
which local training points i.e. which near-RT-RIC to partic-
ipate. This is because at each time interval only a limited
number of clients can participate due to delay constraints
originating from the control loops of O-RAN. Therefore,
the selected clients upload their local FL models updates
depending on the wireless media. We define a binary variable
atm ∈ {1, 0} to decide whether or not the trainer m is
selected in round t, and at = (at1 , ......, atM ) collects the
overall trainers’ selection decisions. A selected near-RT-RIC
in round t i.e. (atm = 1), consumes compute resources to
train locally with the collected data. At the same time, these
selected trainers also consume bandwidth resources to transmit
update vectors. We consider the orthogonal frequency division
multi access (OFDMA) for local model uploading with a total
bandwidth B. Let btm ∈ [0, 1] be the bandwidth allocation
ratio for trainer m in round t, hence its allocated bandwidth
is btm B.PLet bt = (bt1 , ......., btM ). Bandwidth allocation must
satisfy m∈M btm = 1 ∀t. Clearly if atm = 0, namely trainer
m is not selected in round t, then no bandwidth is allocated to
it i.e. btm = 0. On the other hand, if atm = 1, then we require
at least a minimum bandwidth bmin is to be allocated to the
trainer m i.e. btm ≥ bmin . To make the problem feasible, we
1 g ||, for any g, g .
assume bmin ≤ M . Therefore, total resource cost for using
communication bandwidth is:
M
X T
X ||∆Fi (g) − ∆F (g)|| ≤ δi , and δ := i S i i .
Rco = co
Rm = atm btm Bptr
m=1 t=1
for T global rounds where ptr is the unit cost of bandwidth
cp
usage. For each near-RT-RIC m, let Rm denote its local
training compute resource cost in every round which depends
on its computing host and dataset. To process the local dataset
each near-RT-RIC uses the CPU cycle frequency of the host.
Let the CPU power of mth host be fm cycles/s and the per
unit time usage cost be pc . Then the total compute resource
cost is:
M T
X X D m cm
Rcp = Rmcp
= atm pc (4)
m=1 t=1
fm
where cm is the CPU cycles required for processing a bit of
data.
Constraint (6) states that the g is the optimal model parameter
i.e. for every global round beyond T , the difference between
the loss function values falls within the defined accuracy level.
Here, F (.) denotes the global loss function, defined over all
the local loss functions as:
M
X
∇F (g) := (|Si |/S)fi (gi ) (7)
i=1
In [9], it is proven that the number of global iterations required
to attain a level of global accuracy  and local accuracy θ can
be upper bounded by:
O(log(1/))
K(, θ) = (8)
(1 − θ)
We use this relationship among the local accuracy level, global
model accuracy, and the upper limit on the number of required
global rounds to model the FL time. In order to ensure
the convergence of the gradient descent approximation, the
following assumptions are considered on the loss functions at
each near-RT-RIC training point:
(i) Fi (g) is convex.
0 0
(ii) Fi (g) is ρ-Lipschitz, i.e. ||Fi (g) − Fi (g )|| ≤ ρ||g − g ||,
0
for any g, g .
0
(iii) Fi (g) is β-smooth, i.e, ||∆Fi (g) − ∆Fi (g )|| ≤ β||g −
0 0
(iv) For any g and i, the difference between the global gradient
and local gradient can be bounded byP
S .δ
(3) These assumptions are in line with the recent works [10], [11],
[6], [12] on convergence analysis of FL.
D. Latency Model
We consider synchronous communication, in other words
all the near-RT-RICs send their local update vectors to the
Non-RT-RIC before the tth round of global aggregation starts.
Therefore, before entering this communication round, all
the near-RT-RICs must finish its local ML processing. In
each of the global round, the FL tasks are spanned over
three operations: (i) computation, (ii) communication of local
updates to the Non-RT-RIC using uplink, and (iii) broad-
cast communication to all the involved near-RT-RICs using
downlink. Let the computation time required for one local
round for mth near-RT-RIC be Tm cp
, and there be Kl local
iterations in each interval of the global communication. Then,

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 2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

cp
the computation time in one global iteration round is Kl Tm . each global round, (12e) imposes this criteria. The relationship
Let the communication time required in transferring the local between local accuracy and the number of global rounds
update vectors from mth near-RT-RIC to the Non-RT-RIC be is stated in (12f) where µ is a multiplication factor. (12h)
co
Tm in the uplink phase. Let dm be the datasize of the update represent the defining domain of the decision variable.
vector of mth trainer. Therefore, the learning time in one
III. P ROPOSED S OLUTION
global round of FEDL for the mth local FL model trainer
is: (12) is a non-convex optimization problem because of the
cp co
Tm = Kl .Tm + Tm ;m ∈ M (9) non-convex objective function and constraints (12e)-(12g). So,
co we decompose the problem into two sub-problems and then
Where Tm is calculated as:
use iterative solution to reach the optimal solution. We first
co dm solve the problem of trainers’ selection and then use this
Tm = ;m ∈ M (10)
btm .B solution to allocate resources optimally to these selected local
In the downlink phase, we do not consider the delay because trainers. Fig. 2 shows the scheme of the proposed solution.
it is negligible as compared to the uplink delay as a result Due to the variation in traffic patterns for different kinds
of high speed downlink communication. Let K be the total Solution Approach
Slicing based
number of global rounds to attain the global accuracy  as and deadline Solving (13) using
established in (8). Therefore, the total learning time can be aware client Algorithm 1
Original problem (12): selection (13)
modeled as: Resource cost and FL Using the
time minimization, solutions to
total sub. to optimal client implement
T = K .Tmax = K . max{Tm ; ∀m ∈ M} (11) selection and Algorithm 2
bandwidth allocation Resource
E. Problem Formulation Allocation for Solving (14) using
selected near- SCA method
Our goal is to jointly minimize the resource cost and the RT-RICs (14)
learning time under the constraints of model accuracy, and
available compute and bandwidth resources. This can be done Fig. 2. Schematic Diagram of the Proposed Solution
by optimizing the selection of local trainers i.e. near-RT-RICs,
bandwidth allocation, and number of local training rounds, as of slicing services of O-RAN, the local FL model might en-
formulated in the optimization model (12). counter inconsistency problem. This may lead to a degradation
in accurate prediction. We take into account this differentiation
P: min {(1 − ρ)Rtotal + ρ.T total } (12) and propose a trainers’ selection algorithm that respects the
at ,bt ,θ,Kl
formation of slices in O-RAN while maintaining a deadline
subject to:
awareness.
0 < θ < 1, (12a)
A. Local Trainers’ Selection
M
X
atm .btm .B ≤ B, (12b) According to the specifications defined by O-RAN Alliance,
m=1 the collected RAN operational data can be separated based on
XM their slice-user groups. Each near-RT-RIC is then fed with
btm = 1, (12c) slice specific network data. The selection of a near-RT-RIC
m=1 corresponding to a slice must be incorporated in each iteration
bmin ≤ btm ≤ 1 ; ∀mM, (12d) of gradient descent training of the model. However, not all the
cm .Dm co local models can be accommodated in each iteration because
max{ + Tm } = Tmax , (12e) of the deadline constraint (13a) and limited computational and
m fm
log(1/) bandwidth resources to be assigned for this learning task. So,
K = µ. , (12f) we propose Algorithm 1 for this selection in alignment with
(1 − θ)
the O-RAN slice definition. In this algorithm, we categorize
atm ∈ {1, 0}. (12g)
the set of near-RT-RICs into three classes corresponding to
The objective function (12) has two components balanced by eMBB, uRLLC, and mMTC slicing services.
a trade-off parameter ρ because the two goals are conflicting. Our objective in this trainers’ selection algorithm is to
The total resource cost, Rtotal = Rcp + Rco and the FL maximize the number of near-RT-RICs to participate in each
training time, T total as given by (11). Minimizing the resource global round and allow the non-RT-RIC to aggregate all
cost naturally leads to higher learning time and vice-versa. received data. This is based on the idea that a larger fraction
Constraint (12a) limits the local accuracy line. Constraint of trainers in each round saves the total time required for a
(12b) bounds the total bandwidth allocated for the FL tasks. global FL model to attain the desired accuracy performance
Constraint (12c) presents the definition of btm i.e, the sum of [13]. Let N (⊆ M) be the set of selected near-RT-RICs, tround
bandwidth fractions must be 1. (12d) denotes the boundary of be the deadline for each global round, t1 be the elapsed time to
the bandwidth fractional allocation. Since we have assumed perform Algorithm 1, and tagg be the time taken in aggregating
the synchronous communication mode of update vectors in the update parameters at the Non-RT-RIC. Therefore, the

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 2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

Algorithm 1 : Deadline aware and Slicing based Local determined experimentally as required in attaining the local
Trainers’ Selection accuracy value θ. We solve this problem using Successive
1: Input: M : Set of all near-RT-RICs Convex Approximation (SCA) method.
2: Initialize N u , N e , N m = Φ
3: for tiround defined for i ∈ {N u , N e , N m } do C. Federated Training in O-RAN RICs(O-RANFed)
4: while |N | > 0 do Using the solutions of trainer selection and resource al-
5: x ← arg minn∈N 12 .(tk−1n + α.tkn (estimated)) location in (14), we train the FL model as described in
6: t ← t1 + tagg. + tkn Algorithm 2. In each global round, a subset of participating
7: N \ {x} local trainers are selected first followed by resource allocation,
8: if t < tiround then and then interaction of local Fl models with the global Fl
9: t ← t + tkn model. This loop continues for K iterations, which is the
10: end if maximum number of global rounds required to attain the
11: end while prefixed accuracy of the model.
12: end for
13: Output: N = N u ∪ N e ∪ N m Algorithm 2 : ORANFed
1: Initialize: Untrained local model at each near-RT-RIC i ∈
mathematical optimization problem for the trainer selection M;
becomes: 2: for k ≤ K ( accuracy) do
max{|N |} (13)
N 3: Non-RT-RIC uses Alg. 1 for client selection;
1 4: compute and bandwidth resources are assigned to se-
s.t. t1 + tagg. + (tk−1 + α.tkn ) ≤ tround . (13a)
2 n lected near-RT-RICs (N );
(13) is a combinatorial optimization problem which makes it 5: Each near-RT-RIC trains using local data till it achieves
non-trivial. So, we employ a greedy heuristic to solve this an accuracy θ and obtains gi,k ;
problem as shown in Algorithm 1. We repeat the steps in 6: Model update parameters edge clouds sent to the Non-
each global round until we get the desired accuracy. Here, the RT-RIC;
constraint (13a) restricts the violation of the deadline for every 7: Non-RT-RIC aggregates the local weights through (2);
near-RT-RIC in each global round. The deadline is assigned 8: Non-RT-RIC broadcasts the aggregated parameters;
separately for each slice-user groups while the total deadline 9: Non-RT-RIC calculates the global accuracy attained (6);
in each round is varied experimentally to observe its impact 10: end for
on overall learning time of FL model. 11: Finally trained model is sent to SMO for deployment
B. Resource Allocation
From the trainer selection phase, we obtain at i.e. a binary D. Complexity Analysis
valued vector of selected trainers in k th global round. The O-RANFed consists of trainers’ selection in step 3, and
next phase is to allocate the compute and bandwidth resources assignment of resources in step 4. Steps 5 to 9 trains the FL
to support the local training, parameters uploading, model model iteratively. So, its complexity can be analysed in two-
aggregation, and broadcast of updated model weights. For part. In the first part, (13) is solved using Algorithm 1 having
this we solve the optimization problem (12) with known time complexity of O(L) where L is the cardinality of the set
variable at . Still, (12) is a non-convex optimization prob- M. In the second part, (14) is solved using SCA approach
lem, exact solution of which is infeasible using traditional having complexity O(JSCA ) [14], where JSCA is the total
methods. Therefore, we employ an approximation approach number of iterations within the SCA algorithm.
with equivalent surrogate functions. The multiplication factor IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
µ in (12f) is chosen such that the whole numerator part is 1.
(12d) is replaced by an inequality preserving the same lower TABLE I
S IMULATION S ETTINGS
bound on Tmax value. With these changes and substituting the
defining expressions, the optimization problem (12) reduces Parameter Value Parameter Value
N 50 B 1M Hz
the following mathematical form: cm 15cycles/bit fm ∼ U (1, 1.6)GHz
T ptr 1 pc 1
Dm ∼ U (5, 10)M B d 1
n X
P1: tmin (1 − ρ) atm .btm .B.ptr bmin 0.1M Hz ρ (0, 1)
b ,θ,Kl
t=1
T
X Dm .cm  1 o
Federated Learning Task: We trained a prediction model
+ Kl . atm . .pc + ρ. .Kl .Tmax (14)
fm 1−θ where each near-RT-RIC processes a time series data con-
t=1
taining the volume of traffic requested by its corresponding
slice in a period of one month. The Dataset represents hourly
subject to: (12a), (12b), (12c), (12d), and (12e)
operational data of lower level network traffic. Using this
The number of local iterations (Kl ) in each global round is dataset, the trained model predicts the requirement of amount

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 2022 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

of traffic in the next hour. We used Long Short Term Memory
(LSTM) based neural network with 4 layers to train this
regression model. We run this training on Intel(R) Core(TM)
i5-8265U CPU. The model attains 96.3% (approx.) accuracy
in centralized ML model. Therefore, the global accuracy  of
the FL model is taken as 0.96.
Wireless Network: In order to compare our proposed model
with state-of-the-art FL methods, we considered a compatible
wireless network setting as described in Table 1. For simplic-
ity, all near-RT-RICs have the same data processing rate cm .
We used a uniform distribution random generator for assigning
CPU frequency (fm ) of the host. The maximum bandwidth
capacity (B) is 1 MHz whereas the minimum (bmin ) is kept
at 0.1. To better present result and without loss of generality,
the communication and compute cost (ptr , pc ) are set as unit
value. The local dataset size is distributed uniformly in the
range of (5, 10) MB. For benchmark, we consider FedAvg
[13] algorithm with fixed number of clients (N = 50), which
is the maximum number of near-RT-RICs in each global round.
Another prominent FL method is FedProx [15], which takes a
probability distribution to select the number of clients in each
global round. These two methods are suitable for comparative
analysis as one sets the upper limit on the client selection,
the later follows variable selection policy that differs from
our proposed ORANFed. Fig. 3 presents a comparison of the
60
50
Local Accuracy ( )
Number of Clients
the two other methods. This helps O-RANFed in saving FL
time as well as resources.
In terms of the objectives costs (resource and time), O-
RANFed performs better than FedAvg and FedProx. Fig. 5 and
6 show learning time and resources consumed by each method.
In these figures the behaviour of FL methods is plotted against
the pareto co-efficient (ρ). We can see that the learning time
of O-RANFed is the lowest, and it is much lower for higher
value of ρ. Moreover, resource cost required by O-RANFed is
the lowest, and it is lower for smaller value of ρ.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a federated learning method
designed for O-RAN slicing environment. Our model takes
into account the importance of slice specific local trainers as
well as the resource allocation for performing FL tasks. The
simulation results show FL can be implemented to predict
data traffic of different slices in O-RAN. Our proposed model
outperforms state-of-the-art FL methods in terms of learning
time and resource cost in the simulations. Therefore, it can
be deployed in the control loops of O-RAN to guarantee the
slice QoS. In future, we will investigate the location of the
distributed data collection points to improve O-RANFed in a
highly distributed environment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Mitacs, Ciena, and ENCQOR for funding
0.9 O-RANFed
0.8 FedProx this research under the IT13947 grant.
FedAvg
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