Efficient UAV Swarm-Based Multi-Task Federated Learning with Dynamic Task Knowledge Sharing

Abstract: UAV swarms are widely used in emergency communications, area monitoring, and disaster relief. Coordinated by control centers, they are ideal for federated learning (FL) frameworks. However, current UAV-assisted FL methods primarily focus on single tasks, overlooking the need for multi-task training. In disaster relief scenarios, UAVs perform tasks such as crowd detection, road feasibility analysis, and disaster assessment, which exhibit time-varying demands and potential correlations. In order to meet the time-varying requirements of tasks and complete multiple tasks efficiently under resource constraints, in this paper, we propose a UAV swarm based multi-task FL framework, where ground emergency vehicles (EVs) collaborate with UAVs to accomplish multiple tasks efficiently under constrained energy and bandwidth resources. Through theoretical analysis, we identify key factors affecting task performance and introduce a task attention mechanism to dynamically evaluate task importance, thereby achieving efficient resource allocation. Additionally, we propose a task affinity (TA) metric to capture the dynamic correlation among tasks, thereby promoting task knowledge sharing to accelerate training and improve the generalization ability of the model in different scenarios. To optimize resource allocation, we formulate a two-layer optimization problem to jointly optimize UAV transmission power, computation frequency, bandwidth allocation, and UAV-EV associations. For the inner problem, we derive closed-form solutions for transmission power, computation frequency, and bandwidth allocation and apply a block coordinate descent method for optimization. For the outer problem, a two-stage algorithm is designed to determine optimal UAV-EV associations. Furthermore, theoretical analysis reveals a trade-off between UAV energy consumption and multi-task performance.