Pruning-Based TinyML Optimization of Machine Learning Models for Anomaly Detection in Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

Abstract

With the growing need for real-time processing on IoT devices, optimizing machine learning (ML) models' size, latency, and computational efficiency is essential. This paper investigates a pruning method for anomaly detection in resource-constrained environments, specifically targeting Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (EVCI). Using the CICEVSE2024 dataset, we trained and optimized three models-Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and XGBoost-through hyperparameter tuning with Optuna, further refining them using SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP)-based feature selection (FS) and unstructured pruning techniques. The optimized models achieved significant reductions in model size and inference times, with only a marginal impact on their performance. Notably, our findings indicate that, in the context of EVCI, pruning and FS can enhance computational efficiency while retaining critical anomaly detection capabilities.

This paper has been accepted for presentation at IEEE ICC 2025. The final published version will be available in the conference proceedings. The implementation and code are available at: https://github.com/Western-OC2-Lab/EVCI-Pruning