FedMTPP: Federated Multivariate Temporal Point Processes for Distributed Event Sequence Forecasting

Abstract

With the rapid development of mobile network technology and wearable mobile devices, user-scenario interactions generate a large amount of user behavioral data in the form of multivariate event sequences. Due to data isolation, these multi-scenario events need to be jointly trained to achieve better prediction results. However, traditional federated learning methods face significant challenges when handling distributed event sequences. And the effectiveness of existing modeling approaches for event sequences in federated contexts has not been thoroughly explored. To this end, we propose Federated Multivariate Temporal Point Processes (FedMTPP), which enables learning from distributed event sequences within a novel federated learning framework and leverages efficient event modeling technology, MTPP, to forecast future events. Specifically, FedMTPP restores the temporal structure of the original event sequence by rearranging event embeddings and redesigns the autoregressive-based hidden representation computation in traditional MTPP, making it more suitable for federated prediction tasks. Additionally, FedMTPP incorporates advanced encryption techniques to effectively safeguard user privacy and security. Experimental results on both synthetic and real datasets demonstrate that FedMTPP substantially improves the performance of local models and achieves results comparable to state-of-the-art centralized MTPP methods.