Large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) networks enable intelligent services such as smart cities and autonomous driving, but often face resource constraints. Collecting heterogeneous sensory data, especially in small-scale datasets, is challenging, and independent edge nodes can lead to inefficient resource utilization and reduced learning performance. To address these issues, this paper proposes a collaborative optimization framework for energy-efficient federated edge learning with small-scale datasets. We first derive an expected learning loss to quantify the relationship between the number of training samples and learning objectives. A stochastic online learning algorithm is then designed to adapt to data variations, and a resource optimization problem with a convergence bound is formulated. Finally, an online distributed algorithm efficiently solves large-scale optimization problems with high scalability. Extensive simulations and autonomous navigation case studies with collision avoidance demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves learning performance and resource efficiency compared to state-of-the-art benchmarks.
@article{arxiv.2604.10662,
title = {Energy-Efficient Federated Edge Learning For Small-Scale Datasets in Large IoT Networks},
author = {Haihui Xie and Wenkun Wen and Shuwu Chen and Zhaogang Shu and Minghua Xia},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.10662},
year = {2026}
}