Personalized Federated Learning for Smart Healthcare Using SDN-Driven Edge Computing

The advancement in distributed Federated Learning (FL) techniques is transforming next-generation edge computing, especially in e-Helathcare systems where data integrity and security are critical concerns. Collecting, processing and analyzing such substantial medical data is highly challenging due to their non-identical and versatile nature. Conventional FL approaches often show unsatisfactory and inaccurate results while operating on those data. Traditional FL methods also lack optimal dynamic management mechanisms for edge devices in ehealthcare, which is crucial to ensure that only authorized devices participate in handling any system failures and new registrations. To tackle such important aspects, in this work, we propose a personalized FL technique to handle abrupt label shifts among clients' data. The proposed approach further targets to achieve personalized models for local edge clients. A statistical batch normalization is proposed on customized edge servers, keeping the data specificity intact. To make the proposed system more secure and robust, a Software Defined Network-based (SDN-based) centralized server is used that allows only authorized and efficient edge clients to participate. The proposed comprehensive experiments on two healthcare datasets demonstrate better accuracy than traditional FL methods with enhanced security and privacy.