Federated Learning Meets Contract Theory: Economic-Efficiency Framework for Electric Vehicle Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel energy-efficient framework for an electric vehicle (EV) network using a contract theoretic-based economic model to maximize the profits of charging stations (CSs) and improve the social welfare of the network. Specifically, we first introduce CS-based and CS clustering-based decentralized federated energy learning (DFEL) approaches which enable the CSs to train their own energy transactions locally to predict energy demands. In this way, each CS can exchange its learned model with other CSs to improve prediction accuracy without revealing actual datasets and reduce communication overhead among the CSs. Based on the energy demand prediction, we then design a multi-principal one-agent (MPOA) contract-based method. In particular, we formulate the CSs' utility maximization as a non-collaborative energy contract problem in which each CS maximizes its utility under common constraints from the smart grid provider (SGP) and other CSs' contracts. Then, we prove the existence of an equilibrium contract solution for all the CSs and develop an iterative algorithm at the SGP to find the equilibrium. Through simulation results using the dataset of CSs' transactions in Dundee city, the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2018, we demonstrate that our proposed method can achieve the energy demand prediction accuracy improvement up to 24.63% and lessen communication overhead by 96.3% compared with other machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, our proposed method can outperform non-contract-based economic models by 35% and 36% in terms of the CSs' utilities and social welfare of the network, respectively.