CroSatFL: Energy-Efficient Federated Learning with Cross-Aggregation for Satellite Edge Computing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yang, Nan, Javadi, Bahman, Calheiros, Rodrigo Neves, Boland, David, Leong, Philip
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Yang, Nan
Javadi, Bahman
Calheiros, Rodrigo Neves
Boland, David
Leong, Philip
author_facet Yang, Nan
Javadi, Bahman
Calheiros, Rodrigo Neves
Boland, David
Leong, Philip
contents Low Earth Orbit (LEO) mega-constellations extend the cloud-to-edge continuum into space, enabling satellite edge computing. However, Federated Learning (FL) in this environment is fundamentally energy-constrained due to dynamic inter-satellite connectivity, heterogeneous onboard computing hardware, and strict power budgets. We propose CroSatFL, a sustainable on-orbit hierarchical FL framework that reduces end-to-end energy across computation and communication while maintaining strong training performance under realistic LEO dynamics. CroSatFL keeps the ground station (GS) off the iterative loop by performing all local training and intermediate aggregations on orbit, requiring only two GS communication phases: one for initialization and one for final model collection. This sharply reduces repeated use of bandwidth-limited and energy-expensive GS links and shifts iterative exchanges to laser inter-satellite links (LISLs). CroSatFL integrates three energy-aware mechanisms: StarMask forms LISL-feasible clusters that align data volume with heterogeneous CPU/GPU capability, Skip-One mitigates transient stragglers by skipping at most one slow client per cluster to lower round energy and latency while preserving long-term fairness, and random-k cross-aggregation enables lightweight topology-aware cross-cluster mixing without extending round duration. Using an end-to-end energy model with a realistic Walker-Delta constellation, we show that CroSatFL reduces GS communication count by over two orders of magnitude and GS transmission energy by about 6x relative to GS-centric and on-orbit baselines, while achieving competitive accuracy and faster convergence.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_15779
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CroSatFL: Energy-Efficient Federated Learning with Cross-Aggregation for Satellite Edge Computing
Yang, Nan
Javadi, Bahman
Calheiros, Rodrigo Neves
Boland, David
Leong, Philip
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) mega-constellations extend the cloud-to-edge continuum into space, enabling satellite edge computing. However, Federated Learning (FL) in this environment is fundamentally energy-constrained due to dynamic inter-satellite connectivity, heterogeneous onboard computing hardware, and strict power budgets. We propose CroSatFL, a sustainable on-orbit hierarchical FL framework that reduces end-to-end energy across computation and communication while maintaining strong training performance under realistic LEO dynamics. CroSatFL keeps the ground station (GS) off the iterative loop by performing all local training and intermediate aggregations on orbit, requiring only two GS communication phases: one for initialization and one for final model collection. This sharply reduces repeated use of bandwidth-limited and energy-expensive GS links and shifts iterative exchanges to laser inter-satellite links (LISLs). CroSatFL integrates three energy-aware mechanisms: StarMask forms LISL-feasible clusters that align data volume with heterogeneous CPU/GPU capability, Skip-One mitigates transient stragglers by skipping at most one slow client per cluster to lower round energy and latency while preserving long-term fairness, and random-k cross-aggregation enables lightweight topology-aware cross-cluster mixing without extending round duration. Using an end-to-end energy model with a realistic Walker-Delta constellation, we show that CroSatFL reduces GS communication count by over two orders of magnitude and GS transmission energy by about 6x relative to GS-centric and on-orbit baselines, while achieving competitive accuracy and faster convergence.
title CroSatFL: Energy-Efficient Federated Learning with Cross-Aggregation for Satellite Edge Computing
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15779