IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2022 24561

Mobile Charging Station Placements in Internet of

Electric Vehicles: A Federated Learning Approach
Linfeng Liu , Member, IEEE, Zhiyuan Xi, Kun Zhu , Member, IEEE, Ran Wang , Member, IEEE,
and Ekram Hossain , Fellow, IEEE

Abstract— In Internet of Electric Vehicles (IoEV), mobile

charging stations (MCSs) can be deployed to complement fixed
charging stations. Currently, the strategy of MCSs is to move
towards the EVs with insufficient energy (IEVs) only after being
requested, which is not efficient. However, similar to online car-
hailing services, more IEVs could be charged and the charging
expenses could be reduced if idle MCSs can actively move
towards the potential charging positions. In this paper, the
problem of placements of idle MCSs in an IoEV is investigated
in order to enhance the proportion of charged IEVs and reduce
the charging expenses of IEVs. To this end, we propose a
Federated Learning based Placement Decision Method of Idle
MCSs (FL-PDMIM) to help the idle MCSs to predict the future
charging positions, by exploiting the historical routes of MCSs Fig. 1. A mobile charging station.
which contain rich information regarding the charging demand
of IEVs. In the proposed framework, the historical routes are
trained locally by each MCS, and then the local model parameters communications modules to support vehicle to everything
and charging records are periodically uploaded to an edge
server for a global parameter aggregation. Then, idle MCSs (V2X) communications, and thus they constitute an Internet
decide their placements according to the predicted charging of Electric Vehicles (IoEV) [3]. Currently, a major concern of
positions (potential charging positions). The training time can be EVs is the limited battery capacity which could cause “mileage
largely shortened, because the distributed learning on each MCS anxiety” for EV owners and potential buyers. Accordingly,
is executed in parallel. Extensive simulations and comparisons providing convenient charging services is of critical impor-
demonstrate the performance superiority of FL-PDMIM. Specif-
ically, with the proposed federated learning-based predictions, the tance to enhance the user experience. A major solution is
waiting time of IEVs to be served can be significantly shortened, the wide and dense deployment of fixed charging stations
and FL-PDMIM enhances the proportion of charged IEVs and (FCSs) as public infrastructures. Besides, mobile charging
reduces the charging expenses of IEVs effectively. stations (MCSs) [4], [5] have been developed (e.g. NIO Power,
Index Terms— Internet of Electric Vehicles (IoEV), mobile Porsche turbo charging, as shown in Fig. 1) to provide flexible
charging stations, federated learning, placement decisions. charging services as a complement of FCSs. With MCSs and
information sharing through IoEV, the provision of mobile
I. I NTRODUCTION charging services can be considered as similar to the online
car-hailing services, where the EVs with insufficient energy
I N RECENT years, the market share of electric vehicles
(EVs) has been growing rapidly, along with the increasing
concerns over the environment and more stringent emission
(referred to as IEVs) can be charged in negotiated locations.
In this paper, we consider the scenario where MCSs are
regulations [1], [2]. EVs are usually equipped with wireless deployed as public infrastructures and IEVs request charg-
ing services from neighboring MCSs. There are four states
Manuscript received 10 January 2022; revised 17 May 2022 and 15 July of MCSs:
2022; accepted 29 August 2022. Date of publication 21 September 2022;
date of current version 5 December 2022. This work was supported by the • Idle state. An MCS does not receive any charging
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62272237, Grant requests from IEVs, or it has not been assigned to charge
61872191, Grant 62061146002, and Grant 61801215. The Associate Editor any IEVs.
for this article was J. Catalão. (Corresponding author: Kun Zhu.)
Linfeng Liu and Zhiyuan Xi are with the School of Computer Science and • Assigned state. An MCS has been assigned to charge one
Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing or more IEVs. The charging positions are determined
210023, China (e-mail: liulf@njupt.edu.cn; xzyedu2020@163.com). by the consultations between the assigned MCS and
Kun Zhu and Ran Wang are with the College of Computer Science and
Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing the IEVs.
211106, China (e-mail: zhukun@nuaa.edu.cn; wangran@nuaa.edu.cn). • Charging state. An MCS is charging some IEVs in the
Ekram Hossain is with the Department of Electrical and Computer negotiated locations.
Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada
(e-mail: ekram.hossain@umanitoba.ca). • Offline state. An MCS is out of service, e.g. due to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2022.3205596 maintenance or lack of electric energy.
1558-0016 © 2022 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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24562 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022
Fig. 2. A placement decision of an idle MCS.
Naturally, the issue of placements of i dle MCSs arises, i.e.
should the idle MCSs remain stationary or should they actively
move? Currently, the strategy of MCSs is to stay and move
towards the IEVs only after being requested. However, more
IEVs might be charged and the charging expenses could be
reduced if some idle MCSs can actively move towards the
potential charging positions. The proper placement decisions
of idle MCSs could enable agile responses. An example is
given in Fig. 2 with an idle MCS and two IEVs. The MCS
has not been assigned before receiving the charging requests
of the two IEVs, and the IEVs can be charged in a more timely
fashion if the idle MCS decides to move towards the future
charging position in advance.
In this paper, we deal with the problem of efficient place-
ments of idle MCSs to enhance the proportion of charged
IEVs and reduce the charging expenses of IEVs. Intuitively,
the placements of idle MCSs can be determined according
to the regularity of daily charging events. However, EVs are
typically with private ownerships, and the private information
of EVs (e.g. historical routes of EVs, real-time positions, and
residual battery energy) cannot be obtained and exploited by
MCSs. In contrast, MCSs are considered as a component of the
public transport infrastructures [6], and their historical routes
and charging records are available.
Considering that the charging positions cannot be deter-
mined before IEVs making the charging requests, the
placements of idle MCSs should be decided by a learn-
ing framework which predicts the future charging positions.
Moreover, a centralized learning scheme is not feasible for
the placement decisions of idle MCSs due to the extremely
long training time, and a distributed learning scheme is more
preferable.
Motivated by the above considerations, we propose a
Federated Learning based Placement Decision Method of Idle
MCSs (FL-PDMIM), as illustrated in Fig. 3, to help idle MCSs
learn to predict the future charging positions, by exploiting the
local historical routes of MCSs which contain rich informa-
tion regarding the charging demand of IEVs. The federated
learning techniques [7], [8], [9] allow nodes to build a shared
learning model collaboratively, and each node performs the
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Fig. 3. A federated learning framework for placement decisions of idle MCSs.
gradient descents to train the model parameters locally to
minimize the loss function defined on its local dataset. In our
scheme, the local model parameters and charging records
are periodically uploaded to the edge server for a global
parameter aggregation. Then, the aggregated model parameters
are released to MCSs for their use. Note that the distributed
learning on each MCS is executed in parallel, and hence the
training time can be largely shortened.
Especially, to improve the training performance, the pro-
posed federated learning scheme is different from the tradi-
tional ones in the following aspects: (i ) the dataset of each
MCS is updated with new mobility information over time, and
each MCS is allowed to exchange the local dataset with other
encountered MCSs to diversify and enlarge the local dataset;
(ii) a scoring mechanism is adopted to preprocess the local
datasets of MCSs; (iii) the edge server sets the aggregation
weights for the local model parameters uploaded from different
MCSs according to their charging records.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows:
Section II briefly surveys some existing related studies.
Section III provides a system model and problem formulation
for the placements of idle MCSs. Section IV proposes the
Federated Learning based Placement Decision Method of Idle
MCSs (FL-PDMIM). Section V covers some further analyses
on FL-PDMIM, including the complexity, convergence, num-
ber of charged IEVs, charging expense of an IEV, and size
of local training dataset of an MCS. Simulation results on
the performance of FL-PDMIM are reported in Section VI.
Finally, Section VII concludes the paper.
II. R ELATED W ORK
A. Charging With Fixed Charging Stations
In the IoEV with FCSs, there are two critical issues to be
addressed: (i ) The optimal layout of FCSs. The layout of FCSs
should be appropriately arranged to minimize the travel time of
LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES
EVs and/or the deployment cost of FCSs. This issue has been
investigated in some literatures, such as [10] and [11]. In [10],
a multi-objective multi-stage collaborative planning model is
proposed for the coupled charging station infrastructure to
minimize the investment and operation cost of the distribution
system, while the captured traffic flow is maximized. The work
in [11] constructs a statistical model to estimate the demand
for charging capacity and charging station scale, and then a
schematization is given to coordinate the locations of FCSs.
(ii) The route schedules of EVs. In [12], a VANET-enhanced
EV charging strategy is developed to reduce the energy con-
sumption and travel cost of EVs while averting the overload
of power system. Besides, [13] attempts to optimize the route
selections and charging/discharging schedules to minimize the
total cost of all EVs, and an A∗ algorithm is adopted to find the
K -shortest paths of EVs. Reference [14] adopts the distance
and waiting time preference to capture the elastic charging
demand, and then a Genetic-Algorithm-based heuristic method
is applied to decide the placements of FCSs. Moreover, [15]
takes the competitive environment into account. By analyzing
the behaviors of EV drivers, a bi-level optimization model is
proposed to optimize the deployments and profits of FCSs.
Indeed, we can draw some insights from the above valuable
works for exploring the placements of idle MCSs, because
FCSs can be viewed as some special MCSs whose velocities
are equal to zero. However, the placement problem of idle
MCSs is much more complex than that of FCSs, due to the
fact that the placements of idle MCSs could be time-varying,
and thus the movement routes of idle MCSs (rather than the
locations of FCSs) should be decided.
B. Charging With Mobile Charging Stations
Some relevant research has been conducted on the MCS
techniques, such as [16], where an MCS dedicated to urban
and resort areas is introduced to charge EVs. A novel heteroge-
neous network model is presented to improve the communica-
tions between EVs and MCSs by using macro cells and small
cells [17], and an algorithm is designed to determine the opti-
mal placements of MCSs based on the charging demand and
maintenance cost. Reference [5] proposes a Lyapunov-based
optimization algorithm to maximize the long-term profits of
MCSs, through formulating a stochastic optimization problem
to decide the optimal strategy of power management. Refer-
ence [18] provides a framework for assigning MCSs to charge
EVs. The problem of assigning MCSs is formulated based
on the charging demand of EVs, and a heuristic algorithm
(slotMCS-Allocation) is given to solve this problem. Besides,
Wang et al. formulate a nonlinear flow-refueling location
model to optimize the MCS locations based on the network
designed by Nguyen and Dupuis [19].
These works focus on studying centralized methods to
determine the placements of MCSs. The global information
(such as the real time positions or the driving routes of EVs)
required by the centralized methods is indispensable. The
exchanges among all EVs or MCSs for the global information
could cause an extremely large communication overhead and
are intolerable to the IOEV. Besides, the global information
could contain some privacy of EVs.
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24563
C. Learning in EV Charging
Recent years have witnessed the great advantages of rein-
forcement learning in optimizing the sequential decision prob-
lems, such as the taxi dispatches and resource allocations.
The spatio-temporally unbalanced charging demand and the
insufficient charging infrastructures could lead to many charg-
ing failures. To this end, [20] proposes a framework, named
Multi-Agent Spatio-Temporal Reinforcement Learning to rec-
ommend the charging stations by jointly considering various
long-term spatio-temporal factors. To maximize the system
objective of public charging stations, a reinforcement learning
approach is proposed in [21], and it is specially used for the
charging scheduling with random EV arrivals and departures.
However, these works focus on FCSs rather than MCSs, and
the reinforcement-learning-based methods typically require the
agents to interact with the environment and other agents
frequently, which yields the large computational complexity
and discloses the privacy of users.
In [4], a deep neural network based on temporal character-
istics is applied to predict the future charging demand, and
hence the areas with high charging demand are found. Then,
some MCSs are assigned to those areas to relieve the charging
pressure on busy charging stations and reduce the scheduling
cost. However, a centralized learning framework is not suitable
for the placement decisions of idle MCSs, since the centralized
learning framework is based on the datasets of all MCSs,
and the computational complexity is extremely high and the
training time is large.
As a promising framework in distributed machine learn-
ing, federated learning has been applied in some existing
works. In [22], a model-selection problem from the stand-
point of mobile participants is formulated, and then a deep
reinforcement learning framework is provided to optimize
several metrics (energy consumption, training timespan, and
communication overhead) for all federated learning partici-
pants. In [23], a federated energy demand learning approach
which allows the charging stations to share their information
without revealing real datasets is proposed, and this approach
can reduce the communication overhead and protect the data
privacy of EVs. Note that the approach in [23] considers FCSs
rather than MCSs. Reference [24] proposes a probabilistic
prediction method based on federated learning. This method
enables EVs to obtain accurate charging demand and driving
ranges without exchanging drivers’ private information, thus
significantly increasing the effective driving ranges and reduc-
ing the travel time of EVs.
III. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
We first describe the problem of placements of idle MCSs
on a road lattice. TABLE I shows the list of notations. Time
is divided into discrete time slots with an equal length of ts ,
and some relevant definitions are given as follows:
A. Road Model
In real road networks, the road segments could have differ-
ent lengths and/or different shapes, such as the real road net-
work given in Fig. 4(a). A road lattice L(m, n) is constructed
24564 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022

TABLE I
M AIN N OTATIONS

with segments parallel to the x and y axes for simplifying the

problem formulation, as shown in Fig. 4(b), and many types of
real road networks can be taken as deformations of this road
lattice. There are (m + 1) · (n + 1) road intersections in the
lattice, and the set of road intersections is denoted by I. The
set of road segments is denoted by S, and the road segments
are of equal length l. Especially, in our proposed method,
the diversiform road segments do not affect the charging
position predictions and the placement decisions, and thus our
proposed method can be easily extended for other types of
road networks.
B. Mobile Charging Stations and Electric Vehicles
There are M MCSs on the road lattice, and the set of
MCSs is denoted by M. For an MCS ψ j , the set of IEVs
to be charged by ψ j is denoted by V(ψ j ), and the determined
charging position at the t-th time slot is labeled by pc (ψ j )(t ),
where pc (ψ j )(t ) ∈ I.
There are N EVs, and each EV has the same communication
range R. The communication range can restrict the range of
charging requests of IEVs and reduce the excessive exchanges
of local datasets of MCSs. The departure position and the
destination of an EV v i are denoted by si and di , respectively,
where si , di ∈ I. v i moves at a speed of m s (v i ), and c unit
of battery energy is consumed for moving through each road
segment.
If the EV v i has enough electric energy to move from si
to di (i.e. ei(0) ≥ c · |si − di |, where |·| denotes the number of
road segments on a Manhattan path [32]), and then v i moves
Fig. 4. A real road network and a road lattice model.
along a Manhattan path to the destination. Otherwise, v i is an
IEV, and v i moves along a Manhattan path until it detects a
(0)
(t ) e
low battery state, i.e. when ei ≤ γi at the t-th time slot v i
makes a charging request to neighboring MCSs. After being
charged, v i continues the movement to the destination.
C. Local Datasets of Mobile Charging Stations
The local dataset of an MCS ψ j at the t-th time slot is
denoted by D(ψ j , t) which is comprised of two parts: (a) the
historical route of ψ j , which is expressed as a set of trajec-
 
tory points T (ψ j , t) = p(ψ j )(0) , p(ψ j )(1) , · · · , p(ψ j )(t ) ;
(b) the historical routes exchanged from other encountered
MCSs.
 
D(ψ j , t) = T (ψ j , t) T (ψk , τ ) · · · , τ ≤ t, (1)
where ψk denotes another MCS which has encountered and
exchanged its historical route with ψ j .

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LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES 24565

When ψ j charges v i , the amount of electric energy trans-

ferred from ψ j to v i is expressed as:
(0)
ei = c · {|si − di | + E m (v i )} − ei , (5)
which indicates that ei is calculated as the insufficient
electric energy of v i for supporting the future movement to the
destination di , because the charging price of MCSs is typically
larger than that of FCSs, and MCSs play a role of emergent
charging providers to offer the emergent charging services.
Besides, the waiting time of v i at the position  p is calculated
by:
⎧    
⎪  p(v i )(t ) − 
p  p(ψ j )(t ) − 
p
⎪
⎪ 0, ≥ ,
⎨ if
m s (vi ) m s (ψ j )
p ) = 
tw (v i ,   
Fig. 5. An illustration of extra movement of an IEV. ⎪
⎪ p(ψ j )(t ) − p   p(v i )(t ) −  p
⎪
⎩ − , otherwise.
m s (ψ j ) m s (v i )
Besides, a charging record R(ψ j , t) includes the positions
where ψ j charged IEVs previously: (6)
  The cumulative waiting time of v i should not be larger than
R(ψ j , t) = pc (ψ j )(0) , pc (ψ j )(1), · · · , pc (ψ j )(t −1) . (2)  to avoid the long-term waiting and guarantee
a threshold T
If ψ j did not charge any IEVs at the (t − 1)-th time slot, the
travel experience of IEVs, and there must be tw (v i ) =
and then pc (ψ j )(t −1) = ∅. Evidently, we have R(ψ j , t) ∈ tw (v i ,  .
p) ≤ T
T (ψ j , t). The charging record of an MCS exhibits the charg- In the real charging scenario, several charging parks could
ing frequency and charging range of this MCS, and the be set up for MCSs charging IEVs, which can be taken as a
charging records of MCSs are utilized by the edge server to special case of this system model where MCSs are assumed
set the aggregation weights of local model parameters which to charge IEVs at road intersections.
are uploaded by different MCSs.
In our work, all MCSs are selected as workers to train F. Objective Functions
the global federated learning model collaboratively. When the
To enhance the proportion of charged IEVs and reduce
road network is very large and can be divided into some sub-
the charging expenses of IEVs, the problem objective of
regions, the MCSs in a sub-region will be selected to train
placements of idle MCSs is formally presented as follows:
a regional federated learning model, because the charging ⎧
demand of IEVs could be much different in different sub- ⎪ Nc
⎪ max
⎨ ,
regions. NI
NI (7)
⎪
⎪ i=1 E x ps(v i )
D. Global Dataset of Edge Server ⎩ min ,
NI
The global dataset of edge server is denoted by Dg (t),
which is comprised of the local model parameters and charging where N I and Nc denote the number of IEVs and the number
records uploaded by MCSs: of charged IEVs, respectively. E x ps(v i ) denotes the charging
    expense of IEV v i . As mentioned above, the objective func-
Dg (t) = Pl (ψ j , t) R(ψ j , t) . (3) tions can be optimized by assigning the idle MCSs to move
ψ j ∈M\Mof f towards the potential charging positions.
The global dataset of edge server is updated every t ∗ time In the next section, we will propose a federated learning
slots, i.e. MCSs upload their local model parameters and framework to predict the future charging positions and make
charging records to edge server every t ∗ time slots for a global placement decisions for idle MCSs by exploiting the historical
parameter aggregation. Then, the aggregated model parameters routes of MCSs, and assign idle MCSs to move towards the
are released by edge server to MCSs for their predictions of predicted charging positions (potential charging positions).
future charging positions. Thus, the idle MCSs can charge IEVs as early as possible
once the IEVs make charging requests, and such mechanism
E. Charging Model for MCSs and IEVs can enhance the proportion of charged IEVs and reduce the
Suppose an MCS ψ j is assigned to charge an IEV v i at the charging expenses of IEVs.
charging position  p, and the extra movement undertaken by
v i is written as: IV. F EDERATED L EARNING -BASED P LACEMENT
   
    D ECISION M ETHOD OF I DLE MCS S
E m (v i ) =  p(v i )(t ) −  p − di | −  p(v i )(t ) − di  , (4)
p  + |
  As introduced in Section I, there exist four states of MCSs:
where  p(v i )(t ) −  p + | p − di | denotes the future movement idle state, assigned state, charging state, and offline state.
distance of v i via the charging position  p , as illustrated The offline MCSs can be temporarily ignored until they are
in Fig. 5. rebooted. Fig. 6 illustrates the state transitions of MCSs.

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24566 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022

routes exchanged from other encountered MCSs) held by ψ j .

At the start of each time slot (suppose at the t-th time slot),
each MCS ψ j first updates the local dataset by:

D(ψ j , t) ← D(ψ j , t − 1) p(ψ j )(t ). (8)
If ψ j encounters another MCS ψk , ψ j exchanges the held
routes with ψk by exchange_msg messages. Then, D(ψ j , t)
is updated again by:

Fig. 6. State transitions of MCSs. D(ψ j , t) ← D(ψ j , t) D(ψk , t). (9)
Likewise, the charging record of ψ j is exchanged with ψk
and updated by:

R(ψ j , t) ← R(ψ j , t) R(ψk , t). (10)
Stage A.2. MCSs receive charging requests from IEVs.
At each time slot, IEVs could make the charging requests by
broadcasting r equest_msg messages within the communica-
tion range R. Suppose an MCS ψ j receives the r equest_msg
from an IEV v i , the following two cases are discussed:
Case 1: If ψ j is an idle MCS, i.e. V(ψ j ) = ∅, and then the
charging position pc (ψ j )(t ) is determined by:
 
(t ) 
pc (ψ j )(t ) = arg min E x ps(v i )| ei ≥ c ·  p(v i )(t )
p ∈I

 
  ,
−p tw (v i , 
p) ≤ T (11)
where E x ps(v i ) denotes the expense of v i paid to ψ j and is
calculated by:
E x ps(v i ) = ex ps(v i , ψ j )
 
= r0 · c · {|si − di | + E m (v i )} − ei(0)
 
 
+ r0 · c ·  p(ψ j )(t ) − 
p , (12)
where r0 denotes the price of electric energy  transferred from
an MCS to an IEV, and  p(ψ j )(t ) −  p denotes the distance
of ψ j moving from current position to position  p.
Equation (11) indicates that the charging position pc (ψ j )(t )
is determined by minimizing the charging expense of the IEV
v i . Under Case 1, the idle MCS will turn into an assigned MCS
Fig. 7. The stages of FL-PDMIM. when the determined charging position is approved by v i .
Case 2: As depicted in Fig. 8, if ψ j has been assigned
to charge some IEVs previously, i.e. V(ψ j ) = ∅, then the
When an MCS is in the charging state, it does not accept any charging position pc (ψ j )(t ) is determined by:
charging requests from IEVs until the current charging service 
is completed, and then it turns into an idle MCS. The MCSs pc (ψ j )(t ) = arg min E x ps(v i )| ei(t ) ≥ c
p ∈I

in idle states or assigned states can be assigned to charge one   
   ,
or more IEVs. ·  p(v i )(t ) − 
p  & tw (v i , 
p) ≤ T
⎧  
In this section, we provide the detailed stages of FL-PDMIM ⎨ e(t ) ≥ c ·  p(v k )(t ) −  
p ,
(Federated Learning based Placement Decision Method of Idle ∀v k ∈ V(ψ j ), s.t.
k
MCSs), as shown in Fig. 7. ⎩ t (v ) + t (v ,  ,
w k w k p) ≤ T
(13)
A. Stage A: MCSs Are Assigned to Charge IEVs at Each
Time Slot where E x ps(v i ) is comprised of the expense of v i paid to ψ j
and the expenses of v i paid to the IEVs having been in V(ψ j ).
An idle MCS or an assigned MCS is able to charge one or E x ps(v i ) is calculated by:
more IEVs at each time slot. 
Stage A.1. MCSs update local datasets. The local dataset of E x ps(v i ) = ex ps(v i , ψ j ) + ex ps(v i , v k ), (14)
ψ j denotes the set of historical routes (including the historical ∀v k ∈V (ψ j )

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LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES 24567

Fig. 8. An MCS is assigned to charge an IEV.

where ex ps(v i , ψ j ) is calculated by (12), and ex ps(v i , v k ) is

expressed as: Fig. 9. Input sequence of held routes.

0, i f E m (v k ) ≤ 0,
ex ps(v i , v k ) = (15)
r0 · c · E m (v k ), otherwise, comprised of several historical routes, and the score of a route
Tk is calculated by:
where E m (v k ) denotes the increased extra movement of v k ,
which is caused by the charging position alteration: ξ · |Tk | ζ · |Rk |
  Scor e(k) = + ,
  Ti ∈D (ψ j ,t ) |Ti | Ri ∈Ti ,Ti ∈D (ψ j ,t ) |Ri |
E m (v k ) =  p(v k )(t ) − 
p  + |
p − dk |
    (18)
   
−  p(v k )(t ) − pc (ψ j )(t −1)−  pc (ψ j )(t −1) − dk  .
where |Tk | denotes the number of trajectory points in Tk , and

Ti ∈D (ψ j ,t ) |Ti | denotes the total number of trajectory points
(16)
If ψ j can provide an available charging position for v i , then in D(ψ j , t). |Rk | denotes the number of charging positions
a r esponse_msg message including pc (ψ j )(t ) and E x ps(v i ) in Tk , and Ri ∈Ti ,Ti ∈D(ψ j ,t ) |Ri | denotes the total number
will be sent to v i . of charging positions in D(ψ j , t). Equation (18) indicates that
Stage A.3. MCSs are selected by IEVs. Upon receiving the a route with a larger size or with more charging positions is
r esponse_msg messages from some MCSs, the MCS provid- rated a higher score. Besides, ξ and ζ are preset parameters to
ing the minimum charging expense is selected by the IEV measure the weights of the proportion of trajectory points and
which makes the charging request, and then an assign_msg the proportion of charging positions, respectively. Moreover,
message is notified to the selected MCS. Suppose MCS ψ j a score threshold is given by:
is selected by the IEV v i : if V(ψ j ) = ∅, the new charging maxTk ∈D(ψ j ,t ) Scor e(k) − minTk ∈D(ψ j ,t ) Scor e(k)
position pc (ψ j )(t ) will be notified to the IEVs in V(ψ j ) by  
D(ψ j , t)
. (19)
noti ce_msg messages; if V(ψ j ) = ∅, ψ j will turn into an
assigned MCS. In an ascending order of scores, the routes with the score
Besides, the set of IEVs to be charged by MCS ψ j is difference smaller than the score threshold are input parallelly,
updated by: while others are input serially, and an example is given
 in Fig. 9.
V(ψ j ) ← V(ψ j ) vi . (17)
Stage B.2. MCSs train and upload local model parameters.
Suppose the t-th time slot is the first time slot of a learning
period, each idle MCS or assigned MCS (suppose the MCS
B. Stage B: Idle MCSs Predict Future Charging Positions ψ j ) locally trains the model parameters Pl (ψ j , t) based on the
During Each Leaning Period dataset D(ψ j , t). A stacked LSTM (Long Short-Term Mem-
At the first time slot of a learning period, the following ory) [33] model is introduced to predict the future charging
stages are carried out: positions, as shown in Fig. 10.
Stage B.1. Input sequence of held routes is determined by In the stacked LSTM model, a common LSTM unit consists
each MCS. The input sequence of held routes for training local of a cell, an input gate, an output gate, and a forget gate.
model parameters is determined by a scoring mechanism. For The cell remembers values over arbitrary time intervals, and
example, with regard to an MCS ψ j , the dataset D(ψ j , t) is three gates regulate the information flow into and out of the

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24568 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022

Fig. 12. Distribution uniformity of charging positions in a charging record.

as the loss function which is convex and is strongly smooth

on the space of neural network realizations to measure the
deviation of the predicted value (predicted charging positions)
from the true value (true charging positions):
Nb  
 2
i=1 pi − pi
MSE = , (21)
Nb
where Nb denotes the batch size (the number of trajectory
points in a training batch), pi denotes the true position of the
i -th point, and pi  denotes the predicted position of the i -th
point.
Fig. 10. A stacked LSTM model for charging position predictions of MCSs.
Then, an upload_msg message including the model para-
meters Pl (ψ j , t) and charging record R(ψ j , t) is sent from
MCS ψ j to the edge server.
Stage B.3. Edge server aggregates and releases model para-
meters. On receiving the upload_msg messages from MCSs,
the edge server sets the aggregation weights for the local
model parameters uploaded from different MCSs according to
their charging records. For example, the aggregation weight
of MCS ψ j is computed as:
  β
 α  N( p) 
R(ψ j , t) · 1 − sup    −
S( p) 
2 
,
Fig. 11. A sliding window of sample sets. p∈R(ψ j ,t )   R(ψ j , t)  m · n · l
(22)
 
cell. Firstly, the trajectory points in a local dataset should where R(ψ j , t) denotes the number of charging positions
be normalized to speed up the training convergence, e.g. in R(ψ j , t), N( p) denotes the number of charging posi-
a trajectory point (x i , yi ) should be normalized by: tions in the rectangle from origin to the position p, as depicted
⎧ in Fig. 12,
 and S( p) denotes  the area ofthis rectangle.
⎪ x i − x min  S( p) 
⎨ xi = , In (22), 1 − sup p∈R(ψ j ,t )  |RN( p)
(ψ ,t )|
− m·n·l 2 measures the
x max − x min (20)
j

⎪ yi − ymin distribution uniformity of charging positions in the charging

⎩ yi = ,
ymax − ymin record R(ψ j , t).
The aggregated model parameters are obtained through
where x min and x max denote the minimum longitude and the
linearly fitting the local model parameters uploaded from
maximum longitude among all trajectory points, respectively.
different MCSs, and then are released to idle MCSs by sending
Likewise, ymin and ymax denote the minimum latitude and
some r elease_msgs.
maximum latitude among all trajectory points, respectively.
Stage B.4. Idle MCSs predict future charging positions.
Then, the normalized dataset passes through a sliding win-
By the aggregated model parameters, each idle MCS predicts
dow to generate several sample sets including some features
a future charging position.
and labels, as described in Fig. 11. The last trajectory point in
a window is taken as a label (a true value), while the remaining
trajectory points are taken as features. C. Stage C: MCSs Decide on the Placements
In the stacked LSTM model, the predictions are made based With regard to an idle MCS, if the predicted charging
on the input features, and the predicted value is compared with position (potential charging position) is different from its
the true value. MSE (Mean Squared Error) [34], [35] is taken current position, and then the idle MCS moves towards the

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LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Fig. 13. Sequence of message exchanges in FL-PDMIM.
predicted charging position. Otherwise, the idle MCS remains
stationary during the current learning period, unless it is
selected by IEVs to become an assigned MCS.
With regard to an assigned MCS, it moves towards the
determined charging position along a shortest Manhattan path.
When the assigned MCS and the IEVs to be charged have
arrived at the charging position, the assigned MCS turns into
a charging MCS. After charging the IEVs, the MCS reverts
back to an idle MCS.
If an MCS ψ j has charged an IEV v i at the t-th time slot,
the charging record of ψ j is updated by:


R(ψ j , t) ← R(ψ j , t − 1) ψ j , vi , t . (23)
An example of sequential diagram concerning the message
exchanges in FL-PDMIM is given in Fig. 13, where an idle
MCS ψ j and an assigned MCS ψ j  receive the charging
request of an IEV v i . ψ j  is selected to charge v i . At the
start of every learning period, ψ j and ψ j  upload their local
model parameters and charging records to the edge server
which aggregates these model parameters. Then, the aggre-
gated model parameters are released to the idle MCS ψ j for
the predictions of future charging positions.
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24569
V. T HEORETICAL A NALYSIS OF FL-PDMIM
A. Complexity
TABLE II shows the communication complexity and com-
putational complexity of the proposed FL-PDMIM.
Specifically, the messages exchanged in FL-PDMIM include
r equest_msg, r esponse_msg, assign_msg, noti ce_msg,
exchange_msg, upload_msg and r elease_msg: (i ) In
Stage A.1, the local historical routes and charging records can
be exchanged, and the number of exchange_msg messages
is up to O(M 2 ) in the worst case. (ii) In Stage A.2, some
IEVs broadcast the r equest_msg messages at each time slot,
and the number of r equest_msg messages reaches O(N 2 ).
(iii) In Stage A.3, each MCS is possible to receive some
r equest_msg messages from IEVs, and thus there are at
most O(N 2 ) r esponse_msg messages. Besides, the number
of assign_msg messages is O(M), and when each assigned
MCS has several assigned IEVs, the number of noti ce_msg
messages is up to O(N). (i v) In Stage B.2 and Stage B.3,
each idle (or assigned) MCS sends an upload_msg message
to edge sever during every learning period, and then the edge
sever releases the aggregated model parameters to idle MCSs,
which implies that the number of upload_msg messages and
24570 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022

TABLE II
C OMPLEXITY OF FL-PDMIM

r elease_msg messages is O(M). Typically M  N, thus the Fig. 14. Potential charging positions of available MCSs.
communication complexity of FL-PDMIM is of O(N 2 ).
With regard to the computational complexity, in Stage A,
MCSs update their local datasets and are possible to determine the EV starts a new travel) obey a Gaussian distribution
the charging positions, which results in O(M) computations. N (μ, δ 2 ) [37], and then the probability of an EV exhausting
Each MCS holds at most M historical routes, hence the its battery energy before arriving at the destination is expressed
computational complexity of Stage B.1 and Stage B.2 is as:
of O(M 2 ). In Stage B.3 and Stage B.4, the edge server    
aggregates the model parameters, and then idle MCSs can pre-


 c · E(
h)−μ −μ
P c · E(h) > x > 0 =  − , (27)
dict future charging positions, indicating that the computation σ σ
complexity is of O(M). In Stage C, the placement decisions
where E(
h) is the expected number of road segments on a
of idle MCSs lead to at most O(M) computations. Therefore,
Manhattan path from a departure position to a destination,
the computational complexity of FL-PDMIM is of O(M 2 ).
and E(
h) is expressed as:

B. Convergence E(
h) = E(|X s − X d | + |Ys − Yd |)
n n m m
Similar to [36], the convergence of FL-PDMIM can be i=0 j =0 |i − j | i=0 j =0 |i − j |
= +
analyzed by the deviation of the k-th aggregated parameters (n + 1) 2 (m + 1)2
w(k) from the optimal model parameters w(k)∗ which are n · (n + 2) · (m + 1) + m · (m + 2) · (n + 1)
assumed to be obtained after κ1 epochs of local parameter = . (28)
3(n + 1) · (m + 1)
training on each MCS and κ2 parameter aggregations on cloud
server. For any MCS ψ j , when the loss function f j (w) is Thus, the expected number of IEVs is given by:
-smooth and convex, we have that:  
E(N I ) = N · P c · E(
h) > x > 0 . (29)
∗
w(k) − w(k) ≤ G c (k, η), (24)
Each IEV makes a charging request when it detects a low
(0)
where (t ) e
battery state, e.g. an EV v i detects that ei ≤ γi at the t-th
G c (k, η) = G c (κ1 · κ2 , η) time slot, and then v i turns into an IEV and makes a charging
1 2  request. The distance between v i and the farthest available
= κ2 + κ2 − 1 · (κ1 + 1) · h (κ1 , ϑ, η) , (25) 2ei
(0)
·m s (v i )
T
2 MCS is written as: γ ·c + l , which is calculated as the
(0)
and h (κ1 , ϑ, η) is expressed as: sum of v i ’s movement
e
distance γi ·c and the MCS’s movement
ϑ   ei(0) ·m s (v i )
h(κ1 , ϑ, η) = · (η ·  + 1)κ1 − 1 − η ·  · κ1 , (26) distance +γ ·c
T
,
as illustrated in Fig. 14.
 l
The number of potential charging positions of available
which indicates that a larger κ2 and a smaller κ1 result in a MCSs is denoted by N p (v i ):
smaller deviation, and a more frequent parameter aggregation ⎢ ⎥
leads to a faster convergence. Furthermore, when ϑ = 0 (the ⎢ 2e(0) T·m s (v ) ⎥
⎢ γi·c + l i ⎥
trajectory data on MCSs is independent and identically distrib- ⎢  ⎥
⎢ ⎥
uted), there is G c (k, η) = 0, i.e. the aggregated parameters can N p (v i ) = ⎢ 4k + 1⎥ . (30)
⎣ ⎦
converge to the optimal model parameters. k=1

C. Expected Number of Charged IEVs Therefore, the probability that at least one available MCS
is located on these potential charging positions is expressed
The number of MCSs is much smaller than that of EVs.  N p (vi ) M
4k+1
Suppose the initial battery energy of EVs ( the initial battery as 1 − 1 − (m+1)·(n+1)
k=1
. When each EV is assumed to
energy of an EV denotes the residual battery energy when

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LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES 24571

be with the same moving speed m s , the expected number of

charged IEVs is written as:
 
 emax exp − (x−μ)2
2δ 2
E(Nc ) = E(N I ) · √
e 2π · δ
⎡ min ⎛ # $ ⎞M ⎤

γ2x·c + T ·ml s
⎢ ⎜ 4k + 1 ⎟ ⎥
·⎢ k=1
⎣1 − ⎝1 − (m + 1) · (n + 1) ⎠ ⎦ d x,
⎥

(31)
where emax and emin denote the maximum battery energy and
the minimum battery energy, respectively. Fig. 15. Expected size of local dataset vs. t ∗ .

D. Expected Charging Expense of an IEV

Furthermore, with regard to an IEV v i , the charging expense
of v i is comprised of two parts: (a) the insufficient electric
energy, which is written as c · |si − di | − ei(0) ; (b) the electric
energy consumed for the extra movement, which is written as
c · E m (v i ). Fig. 14 indicates that, the probability of an IEV
not undertaking any extra movements, is equal to 0.25, and
the expected extra movement of an IEV is expressed as:
  #x $
 emax exp − (x−μ)2 γ ·c
1 2δ 2 (k + 1) · k
· √ · # $ d x, (32)
2 emin 2π · δ γ
x
·c
κ=0 (κ + 1)
k=0
Fig. 16. Average displacement error vs. M, α, and β.
# $
where γx·c denotes the largest extra movement of an IEV
#
(k+1)
$ to exchange the held routes with the encountered MCSs, and
whose initial battery energy is x, and x denotes
the expected number of encountered MCSs is π·R
2 ·M
γ ·c when
κ=0 (κ+1) m·n·l 2
the probability of an IEV undertaking the extra movement k. the MCSs are distributed evenly. The expected size of local
Hence, the expected charging expense of an IEV is written as: dataset at the τ -th time slot is denoted by K (τ ). There is
) c·E(     K (1) = 1, and we have that:
(x−μ)2
· c · E(
h)
emin exp − 2δ 2 h) − x d x
r0 · ) c·E(   π · R2 · M
h) (x−μ)2 K (τ + 1) = 1 + K (τ ) + · K (τ ), (34)
emin exp − 2δ 2
dx m · n · l2
  #x $ which is a Hanoi function [38], and thus the expected size of
 emax exp − (x−μ)2 γ ·c
r ·c 2δ 2 (k +1) · k local dataset of an MCS is written as:
+ 0 · √ · # $ d x,  ∗
2 ·M t
2 emin 2π · δ k=0 γ ·c
x
1 + π·R −1
κ=0 (κ +1) m·n·l 2
K (t ∗ ) = . (35)
(33) 2 π·R ·M
  m·n·l 2
) c·E( (x−μ)2
·(c·E( h)−x )d x
h)
emin exp − Some numerical results regarding (35) are presented
2δ 2
where r0 · ) c·E(  2
 denotes the expected in Fig. 15.
exp − (x−μ)
h)
e 2 dx
min 2δ

charging expense of an IEV for the charge of insufficient
electric energy.
E. Expected Size of Local Dataset of an MCS
The local dataset of an MCS includes the historical route of
itself and the historical routes exchanged with other encoun-
tered MCSs. The size of local dataset of an MCS is measured
by the number of trajectory points in held routes.
In order to avoid the outdated prediction results,
FL-PDMIM allows the trajectory points in the latest t ∗ time
slots (a learning period) to be exploited for training the local
model parameters. During each time slot, an MCS is possible
VI. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATIONS
In this section, we provide comprehensive performance eval-
uations on our proposed FL-PDMIM, along with comparisons
with other training models and other training methods.
We conduct the simulations on a real-world taxi dataset
disclosed by Didi company (https://outreach.didichuxing.com/
app-vue/dataList). This dataset contains the information of
taxi orders (e.g. historical trajectories of taxis, taxi IDs) in
November 2016 and covers the urban areas of Chengdu
city. Note that this dataset has been well pre-processed, and
the trajectory points are bound to the real road network.
Each trajectory of a taxi is represented by a sequence of

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24572 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022

Fig. 17. Two sets of predicted routes obtained by RNN, GRU, and stacked LSTM.

time-stamps, latitudes, and longitudes. We use these taxi TABLE III

trajectories to simulate the movements of MCSs, because taxis S IMULATION PARAMETERS
and MCSs have the similar business intentions: taxis move to
pick up passengers, and MCSs move to charge IEVs. In our
simulations, the data (trajectory points and charging records)
in the latest 30 days is applied to train the local models of
MCSs and set the aggregation weights.
We develop a simulator using Python, and the simulation
results are averaged over 500 runs. Our simulation codes
have been provided on GitHub (https://github.com/lokiwizard/
MCS_Learning). The main parameter settings are shown
in TABLE III.

A. Average Displacement Error

We first introduce the metric Average Displacement Error
(ADE) [39] to measure the prediction accuracy of future
charging positions. The aggregation weights of MCSs are
calculated by (22), where α and β reflect the importance of the
number of charging positions and the distribution uniformity of
charging positions, respectively. The ADE results with three
settings (i ) α = 0.5, β = 0.5, (ii) α = 0.3, β = 0.7, and
(iii) α = 0.7, β = 0.3 are provided in Fig. 16.
Fig. 16 illustrates that ADE is always decreased with the
B. Prediction Accuracy of Future Charging Positions
increase of M, due to the fact that better aggregated model
parameters can be obtained when more MCSs train and upload This simulation results validate the training performance of
their local model parameters to the edge server. Fig. 16 also the stacked LSTM which applies to FL-PDMIM to train the
suggests that the proper settings of α and β can improve local model parameters on each MCS. We compare the stacked
the prediction accuracy of future charging positions, and the LSTM with RNN [40] and GRU [41].
minimum ADE in Fig. 16 is achieved when α = 0.5, β = 0.5, Fig. 17 provides two sets of example routes which are
and M = 45. predicted by RNN, GRU, and stacked LSTM, respectively.

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LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES 24573

Fig. 18. Comparisons of average displacement error and loss value.

In Fig. 17, the predicted routes are visually compared with

the true routes in the Didi Dataset, and the predicted routes
obtained by the stacked LSTM are the closest to the true
routes among the three training models, i.e. the stacked LSTM
achieves the best goodness of fitting.
In Fig. 18(a), the ADE curve of stacked LSTM is lower
than those of RNN and GRU, and these results imply that
the stacked LSTM can achieve a more preferable prediction
accuracy of future charging positions. Besides, the loss value
after 200 training epochs is illustrated in Fig. 18(b), which
indicates that the convergence of the stacked LSTM is much
faster and more stable than RNN and GRU, due to a better Fig. 19. Impacts of waiting time threshold.
generalization ability of the stacked LSTM.
available MCSs, and thus are easier to be charged. (ii) In
C. Impacts of Waiting Time Threshold and Fig. 19(b), the average charging expense of IEVs becomes
Scoring Parameters larger with the increase of μr , and the reason is that an
Fig. 19 illustrates the impacts of T  on the proportion of IEV with more residual battery energy can be charged at a
charged IEVs, average charging expense of IEVs, and average farther position, which implies that more electric energy is
waiting time of IEVs. T  denotes the maximum waiting time consumed and required by IEVs. Besides, a smaller T  restricts
allowing an IEV to stay at a position for the arrival of an the waiting time of IEVs, and hence IEVs probably undertake
MCS. The residual battery energy of IEVs obeys a Gaussian more extra movements and consume more electric energy to
distribution N (μr , δr 2 ). actively move towards the MCSs. (iii) In Fig. 19(c), the
From Fig. 19, several observations follow: (i ) In Fig. 19(a), average waiting time with a smaller T  is shorter than that with
the proportion of charged IEVs increases with increasing , since FL-PDMIM attempts to charge IEVs earlier
a larger T
μr , and the curve with a larger T  is generally higher than under a smaller T .
that with a smaller T . This is because, the IEVs with more Fig. 20 illustrates the impacts of ξ and ζ on the proportion
residual battery energy or longer waiting time have more of charged IEVs, average charging expense of IEVs, and

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24574 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022

Fig. 21. Comparisons among different strategies or training models.

Fig. 20. Impacts of scoring parameters ξ and ζ .
average waiting time of IEVs. In Fig. 20, the curved surfaces
fluctuate with the variations of ξ and ζ . The proper settings of
ξ and ζ can enhance the performance of FL-PDMIM, and the
best results are obtained when ξ = 0.48 and ζ = 0.52. These
results demonstrate that the scoring mechanism adopted in
FL-PDMIM considers the input sequence of routes and helps
to train the local model parameters of MCSs better.
D. Comparisons Among Different Strategies or
Training Models
The performance of FL-PDMIM is compared with Random
Walk (idle MCSs randomly move on the road lattice), RNN,
GRU and COX [42] (a reinforcement learning based method),
in terms of the proportion of charged IEVs, average charging
expense and average waiting time.
As depicted in Fig. 21, the performance of Random Walk
is the worst, which indicates that both the predictions of
future charging positions and the placement decisions of
idle MCSs are essential to improve the charging efficiency.
Besides, due to more accurate predictions of future charging
positions, FL-PDMIM outperforms RNN and GRU evidently.
This is because in a long-term sequence prediction RNN is
not a preferable model due to the vanishing gradient problem.
Besides, the number of parameters in GRU is much fewer
than that in stacked LSTM, and stacked LSTM is better than
GRU to process a large-size dataset. Although the charging

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LIU et al.: MOBILE CHARGING STATION PLACEMENTS IN INTERNET OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES 24575

proportion of COX is close to that of FL-PDMIM, the waiting

time and charging expense of COX is much larger than those
of FL-PDMIM. This is because in COX the idle MCSs have
to coordinate with each other, and then wait for the placement
decisions which are made by the cloud server. Hence, some
idle MCSs could not move towards the potential charging
positions in advance. Especially, Fig. 21 suggests that the
performance of FL-PDMIM is more stable with increasing
number of EVs when they are densely distributed on the road
lattice (N is large enough), i.e. FL-PDMIM shows a good
scalability with the number of EVs.
Besides, the optimal results in Fig. 21 are obtained when the
future charging demand of IEVs is assumed to be completely
known by the edge server, and then the optimal placements
of idle MCSs can be perfectly decided. Fig. 21 indicates that
the gaps between the results of FL-PDMIM and the optimal
results are not very large, especially in terms of the proportion
of charged IEVs and average waiting time of IEVs.

E. Comparisons Among Different Training Methods

To further analyze the merits of FL-PDMIM, we compare
FL-PDMIM with centralized training, traditional federated
learning, and distributed training in terms of ADE and training
time (including the communication delay). Especially, the dis-
tributed learning method is quite different from the federated
learning method. With the distributed training method, MCSs
train their models locally without any information exchanges,
i.e., each MCS never communications with the cloud server
and other MCSs.
In Fig. 22, the ADE obtained by centralized training is
smaller than those obtained by FL-PDMIM and traditional
federated learning, which indicates that the centralized training
can achieve the best prediction accuracy of future charging
positions among these training methods. Besides, the commu-
nication delay of centralized training is slightly smaller than
that of FL-PDMIM, because the size of uploaded historical
routes of MCSs is typically smaller than that of uploaded local
model parameters. However, the training time of centralized
training is significantly longer than others, since the centralized
training is based on the historical routes of all MCSs. There-
fore, the centralized training may not be feasible considering
the fact that the placement decisions of idle MCSs should be
made immediately.
The ADE of distributed training is much higher than those
of other methods. This is because the local training model
could be easily influenced by the under-fitting problem or
the over-fitting problem without the parameter aggregations.
Besides, the training time of distributed training is approxi-
matively equal to that of traditional federated learning, due to
the fact that the communication delay is much shorter than the
training time.
Compared with the traditional federated learning, the ADE
of FL-PDMIM is evidently smaller, due to the following
mechanisms in FL-PDMIM: (i ) The local datasets of MCSs
are allowed to be exchanged with other encountered MCSs,
and the local datasets are enlarged to yield better training
results. (ii) The input sequence of held routes of each MCS is
carefully devised, as described in Stage B.1, the small-sized
Fig. 22. Comparisons among different training methods.
routes are trained serially, while the large-sized routes are
trained in parallel. Such mechanism helps to speed up the
training process and improve the training results as well.
The results in Fig. 22 reflect that FL-PDMIM can achieve
a preferable tradeoff between the prediction accuracy and the
training time.
VII. C ONCLUSION
We have studied the problem of placements of idle MCSs
in the IoEV, and a Federated Learning based Placement Deci-
sion Method of Idle MCSs (FL-PDMIM) has been proposed.
In FL-PDMIM, the historical routes held by MCSs are trained
locally, and the local model parameters and charging records
are periodically uploaded to the edge server for a parameter
aggregation. With the aggregated model parameters, the idle
MCSs predict the future charging positions and decide their
placements. Thus, the idle MCSs can charge IEVs as early as
possible once the IEVs make charging requests. Consequently,
FL-PDMIM enhances the proportion of charged IEVs and
reduces the charging expenses of IEVs effectively. Espe-
cially, FL-PDMIM is suitable for some overhead-sensitive/
privacy-sensitive charging scenarios.
In this work, the unreliability of the communications
between MCSs and edge server is neglected, and the federated
learning algorithm proposed in [44] can address this issue.
Besides, the selfishness of MCSs is not considered in this

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24576 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2022
paper, and thus a pricing mechanism or an auction mechanism
which maximizes the charging profits of MCSs could be
studied in the future, especially in the case where multiple
IEVs compete for the charging services from MCSs.
In real applications, some practical matters (such as the
deployments of MCSs) should be carefully investigated to
avoid the traffic jams caused by the mobile charging and bal-
ance the charging capacity among different regions. Besides,
if MCSs are with selfishness (e.g. MCSs are operated by
different companies), a reasonable price mechanism should
be devised to stabilize the mobile charging market. Although
this work focuses on the issue of placements of idle MCSs,
FCSs can be taken as a special form of MCSs whose velocity
is equal to zero. Thus, our proposed method can be easily
extended to an IoEV with both FCSs and MCSs.
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Linfeng Liu (Member, IEEE) received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in
computer science from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, in 2003 and
2008, respectively. He is currently a Professor with the School of Computer
Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommuni-
cations, China. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers in
some technical journals or conference proceedings, such as IEEE T RANS -
ACTIONS ON M OBILE C OMPUTING , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON PARALLEL
AND D ISTRIBUTED S YSTEMS , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NFORMATION
F ORENSICS AND S ECURITY, IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NTELLIGENT
T RANSPORTATION S YSTEMS , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON V EHICULAR T ECH -
NOLOGY , IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON S ERVICES C OMPUTING , ACM TAAS,
ACM TOIT, Computer Networks, and Elsevier JPDC. His main research
interests include the areas of vehicular ad hoc networks, wireless sensor
networks, and multihop mobile wireless networks. He has served as the TPC
member of Globecom, ICONIP, VTC, and WCSP.
Zhiyuan Xi received the B.S. degree in communication engineering from the
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2018, where he is
currently pursuing the master’s degree. His current research interests include
mobile opportunistic networks and vehicular ad-hoc networks.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University. Downloaded on January 05,2023 at 06:35:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
24577
Kun Zhu (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree from the School
of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
in 2012. He was a Research Fellow with the Wireless Communications
Networks and Services Research Group, University of Manitoba, Canada,
from 2012 to 2015. He is currently a Professor with the College of Computer
Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
China. He is also a Jiangsu specially appointed Professor. He has published
more than 50 technical articles and has served as TPC for several conferences.
He has won several research awards, including IEEE WCNC 2019 Best Paper
Award and ACM China Rising Star Chapter Award. His research interests
include resource allocation in 5G, wireless virtualization, and self-organizing
networks.
Ran Wang (Member, IEEE) received the B.E. degree in electronic and
information engineering from the Honors School, Harbin Institute of Tech-
nology (HIT), China, in July 2011, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science
and engineering from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore,
in April 2016. He is currently an Associate Professor with the College of
Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics (NUAA), and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Novel Soft-
ware Technology and Industrialization, Nanjing, China. His current research
interests include intelligent management and control in smart grid, network
performance analysis, and the Internet of Electric Vehicles.
Ekram Hossain (Fellow, IEEE) is currently a Professor with the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Canada.
He is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada (Class of 2016)
and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. His current research
interests include design, analysis, and optimization of wireless, mobile,
cognitive, and green communication networks, with the emphasis on beyond
5G cellular networks. He was elevated to an IEEE Fellow for contributions
to spectrum management and resource allocation in cognitive and cellular
radio networks. Also, he is an elected member of the Board of Governors
of the IEEE Communications Society from 2018 to 2020. He received
the 2017 IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Green Communications
and Computing (TCGCC) Distinguished Technical Achievement Recognition
Award for the Outstanding Technical Leadership and Achievement in Green
Wireless Communications and Networking. He was listed as a Clarivate
Analytics Highly Cited Researcher in computer science from 2017 to 2019.
He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Press. He served as the
Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE C OMMUNICATIONS S URVEYS AND T UTORIALS
from 2012 to 2016.