Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning

Yujia WangLu LinJinghui Chen

article2022ICML113 citations

Proposes FedCAMS, a communication-compressed adaptive federated learning algorithm that combines error-feedback compression with adaptive optimization to significantly reduce bandwidth overhead while maintaining the theoretical convergence rate of uncompressed methods.

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Federated learning enables multiple edge devices, such as mobile phones and local servers, to collaboratively train machine learning models without transferring raw private data. However, deploying these systems in real-world settings faces two major roadblocks: the excessive communication bandwidth consumed by repeated model exchanges between devices and the central server, and poor training stability when applying standard gradient descent techniques to complex modern architectures. While previous solutions tackled either communication compression or adaptive optimization in isolation, combining the two without causing optimization divergence has remained an unsolved challenge.

The article develops and analyzes FedCAMS, an adaptive federated learning framework that simultaneously achieves communication compression and adaptive optimization while maintaining rigorous mathematical guarantees of convergence. The researchers also introduce an uncompressed foundational variant, FedAMS, which improves upon existing adaptive methods by incorporating a numerical max-stabilization mechanism and supporting momentum during model updates.

To evaluate this approach, the authors established a comprehensive theoretical framework analyzing convergence under standard non-convex optimization conditions for both full and partial client participation. They paired this theory with empirical simulations using standard image classification benchmarks across 100 decentralized clients, testing both conventional neural networks and modern patch-based architectures. The evaluation benchmarked FedCAMS and FedAMS against standard federated baseline algorithms across varying compression techniques, participation rates, and local training epochs.

The findings demonstrate four primary results in order of significance. First, FedCAMS matches the theoretical convergence rate of uncompressed adaptive federated methods while transmitting several orders of magnitude fewer data bits. Second, empirical tests confirm that FedCAMS—particularly when paired with a scaled sign compressor—drastically cuts network data transmission with almost no loss in final prediction accuracy. Third, FedAMS consistently outperforms baseline federated optimizers in both final training loss and model accuracy across tested neural network architectures. Finally, both theoretical proofs and empirical tests confirm that increasing the number of participating clients per training round consistently accelerates convergence.

These results demonstrate that organizations can deploy advanced, large-scale deep learning models across bandwidth-constrained edge networks without incurring massive communication costs or sacrificing model accuracy. The findings resolve prior optimization trade-offs where practitioners had to choose between network efficiency and model stability. Because standard federated averaging struggled significantly on modern patch-based architectures, adopting adaptive federated methods is essential for organizations transitioning to newer model designs.

For practical implementation, organizations deploying federated learning systems over constrained networks should adopt FedCAMS and utilize scaled sign compression, which demonstrated the most reliable trade-off between compression ratio and model accuracy. System designers should also configure training rounds to include as many participating devices as bandwidth allows to accelerate convergence speeds. However, before deploying across bidirectional systems, practitioners should note that the current analysis is limited to one-way compression from client devices to the central server. Future validation is needed to extend synchronization and compression guarantees to two-way server-to-client communications, particularly under partial client participation.

Cover for Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning

Abstract

Federated learning is a machine learning training paradigm that enables clients to jointly train models without sharing their own localized data. However, the implementation of federated learning in practice still faces numerous challenges, such as the large communication overhead due to the repetitive server-client synchronization and the lack of adaptivity by SGD-based model updates. Despite that various methods have been proposed for reducing the communication cost by gradient compression or quantization, and the federated versions of adaptive optimizers such as FedAdam are proposed to add more adaptivity, the current federated learning framework still cannot solve the aforementioned challenges all at once. In this paper, we propose a novel communication-efficient adaptive federated learning method (FedCAMS) with theoretical convergence guarantees. We show that in the nonconvex stochastic optimization setting, our proposed FedCAMS achieves the same convergence rate of O(1/(√(T K m))) as its non-compressed counterparts. Extensive experiments on various benchmarks verify our theoretical analysis.

Knowls

  1. Knowl 1 — FedCAMS combines local SGD, error-feedback compression, and adaptive server updates

    algorithm

    FedCAMS minimizes the federated objective f(x)=1m∑i=1mFi(x)f(x)=\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^{m}F_i(x), where x∈Rdx\in\mathbb{R}^d is the global model and FiF_i is client ii’s loss. It uses KK local SGD steps per round, a compressor CC, client-specific residuals etie_t^i, and an AMSGrad-style server update. The server broadcasts the model without compression; participating clients upload compressed model differences. A client not selected in a round keeps its residual unchanged.

    Input: Initial model x1x_1, local step size ηl\eta_l, server step size η\eta, local steps KK, rounds TT, momentum parameters β1,β2\beta_1,\beta_2, stabilization value ϵ>0\epsilon>0, compressor CC
    Initialize m0=0m_0=0, v0=0v_0=0, and e1i=0e_1^i=0 for every client ii
    for t=1,…,Tt=1,\ldots,T do
        Randomly select the participating client set StS_t
        Broadcast xtx_t to clients in StS_t
        for each client i∈Sti\in S_t in parallel do
            Set xt,0i=xtx_{t,0}^i=x_t
            for k=0,…,K−1k=0,\ldots,K-1 do
                Draw a local stochastic gradient gt,kig_{t,k}^i at xt,kix_{t,k}^i
                Set xt,k+1i=xt,ki−ηlgt,kix_{t,k+1}^i=x_{t,k}^i-\eta_l g_{t,k}^i
            end for
            Set Δti=xt,Ki−xt\Delta_t^i=x_{t,K}^i-x_t
            Set Δ^ti=C(Δti+eti)\widehat{\Delta}_t^i=C(\Delta_t^i+e_t^i) and upload Δ^ti\widehat{\Delta}_t^i
            Set et+1i=Δti+eti−Δ^tie_{t+1}^i=\Delta_t^i+e_t^i-\widehat{\Delta}_t^i
        end for
        for each client j∉Stj\notin S_t do
            Set et+1j=etje_{t+1}^j=e_t^j
        end for
        Set Δ^t=1∣St∣∑i∈StΔ^ti\widehat{\Delta}_t=\frac{1}{|S_t|}\sum_{i\in S_t}\widehat{\Delta}_t^i
        Set mt=β1mt−1+(1−β1)Δ^tm_t=\beta_1m_{t-1}+(1-\beta_1)\widehat{\Delta}_t
        Set vt=β2vt−1+(1−β2)Δ^t2v_t=\beta_2v_{t-1}+(1-\beta_2)\widehat{\Delta}_t^2
        Set v^t=max⁡(v^t−1,vt,ϵ)\widehat{v}_t=\max(\widehat{v}_{t-1},v_t,\epsilon) coordinatewise
        Set xt+1=xt+ηmt/v^tx_{t+1}=x_t+\eta m_t/\sqrt{\widehat{v}_t} coordinatewise
    end for
    Output: xT+1x_{T+1}

    The residual records compression error so that information omitted in one upload can be included in a later one. For clients not selected, retaining the residual makes this mechanism compatible with partial participation. The paper’s convergence analysis for error feedback introduces an auxiliary sequence to control residual effects rather than applying the uncompressed analysis directly.

  2. Knowl 2 — FedAMS stabilizes adaptive federated updates by taking a coordinatewise maximum

    model/method

    FedAMS first aggregates client model differences into a server-side pseudo-gradient Δt\Delta_t. It updates first and second moments coordinatewise as mt=β1mt−1+(1−β1)Δtm_t=\beta_1m_{t-1}+(1-\beta_1)\Delta_t and vt=β2vt−1+(1−β2)Δt2v_t=\beta_2v_{t-1}+(1-\beta_2)\Delta_t^2, where β1,β2∈[0,1)\beta_1,\beta_2\in[0,1) and squares are elementwise. Its max-stabilized update has two variants:

    v^t=max⁡(v^t−1,vt,ϵ),xt+1=xt+η mt/v^t,\widehat v_t=\max(\widehat v_{t-1},v_t,\epsilon),\qquad x_{t+1}=x_t+\eta\,m_t/\sqrt{\widehat v_t},

    or

    v^t=max⁡(v^t−1,vt),xt+1=xt+η mt/(v^t+ϵ).\widehat v_t=\max(\widehat v_{t-1},v_t),\qquad x_{t+1}=x_t+\eta\,m_t/(\sqrt{\widehat v_t}+\epsilon).

    Here xt,mt,vt,v^t∈Rdx_t,m_t,v_t,\widehat v_t\in\mathbb{R}^d, η>0\eta>0 is the server step size, and ϵ>0\epsilon>0 stabilizes the denominator. Maxima, division, and square roots are coordinatewise. The first variant puts ϵ\epsilon inside the maximum and therefore floors only coordinates whose accumulated variance is small; the second is the AMSGrad-style update with ϵ\epsilon added after taking the square root. The paper’s main convergence results are stated for the first variant.

  3. Knowl 3 — FedAMS converges at the full-participation nonconvex rate with momentum

    theoretical result

    Consider f(x)=1m∑i=1mFi(x)f(x)=\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^{m}F_i(x) with all mm clients participating in every round. Suppose each client loss is LL-smooth, stochastic gradients have norm at most GG, local stochastic-gradient variance is at most σl2\sigma_l^2, and client heterogeneity satisfies 1m∑i∥∇Fi(x)−∇f(x)∥2≤σg2\frac{1}{m}\sum_i\|\nabla F_i(x)-\nabla f(x)\|^2\leq\sigma_g^2. For FedAMS with KK local SGD steps per round, β1,β2∈[0,1)\beta_1,\beta_2\in[0,1), and stabilization value ϵ>0\epsilon>0, the paper proves a convergence bound on min⁡t≤TE∥∇f(xt)∥2\min_{t\leq T}\mathbb{E}\|\nabla f(x_t)\|^2 under a sufficiently small local step size. In particular, with C1=β1/(1−β1)C_1=\beta_1/(1-\beta_1), the stated sufficient condition is

    ηl≤min⁡ ⁣{18KL,ϵKβ2K2G2+ϵ((3+C12)ηL+22(1−β2)G)}.\eta_l\leq\min\!\left\{\frac{1}{8KL},\frac{\epsilon}{K\sqrt{\beta_2K^2G^2+\epsilon}\big((3+C_1^2)\eta L+2\sqrt{2(1-\beta_2)}G\big)}\right\}.

    Choosing server step size η=Θ(Km)\eta=\Theta(\sqrt{Km}) and local step size ηl=Θ(1/TK)\eta_l=\Theta(1/\sqrt{TK}), for sufficiently large TT (the paper specifies T≥KmT\geq Km), gives min⁡t≤TE∥∇f(xt)∥2=O(1/TKm)\min_{t\leq T}\mathbb{E}\|\nabla f(x_t)\|^2=O(1/\sqrt{TKm}). This analysis covers positive momentum β1\beta_1, unlike the FedAdam analysis discussed by the authors, which they describe as restricted to β1=0\beta_1=0.

  4. Knowl 4 — FedAMS partial participation has a heterogeneity-sensitive convergence rate

    theoretical result

    For the objective f(x)=1m∑i=1mFi(x)f(x)=\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^{m}F_i(x), suppose each round samples nn of the mm clients uniformly without replacement and averages their local model differences. Under client-loss LL-smoothness, stochastic-gradient norm bound GG, local gradient variance at most σl2\sigma_l^2, and client heterogeneity bound 1m∑i∥∇Fi(x)−∇f(x)∥2≤σg2\frac{1}{m}\sum_i\|\nabla F_i(x)-\nabla f(x)\|^2\leq\sigma_g^2, FedAMS has a convergence bound on min⁡t≤TE∥∇f(xt)∥2\min_{t\leq T}\mathbb{E}\|\nabla f(x_t)\|^2 when the local step size is sufficiently small. With η=Θ(Kn)\eta=\Theta(\sqrt{Kn}) and ηl=Θ(1/TK)\eta_l=\Theta(1/\sqrt{TK}), the paper gives the rate O(K/(Tn))O(\sqrt{K/(Tn)}).

    The bound includes extra sampling-variance terms compared with full participation. The authors identify the term involving σg2\sigma_g^2 as particularly important: client heterogeneity can therefore have a stronger effect under partial participation, while increasing the number nn of participating clients improves the stated rate. The result concerns uniform sampling without replacement.

  5. Knowl 5 — Biased compressors covered by FedCAMS include top-$k$ and scaled-sign

    definition

    FedCAMS assumes a compressor C:Rd→RdC:\mathbb{R}^d\to\mathbb{R}^d for which, for every vector uu, E∥C(u)−u∥≤q∥u∥\mathbb{E}\|C(u)-u\|\leq q\|u\| for some q∈[0,1]q\in[0,1]. The expectation allows randomized compressors; q=0q=0 corresponds to no compression. The paper identifies top-kk sparsification and scaled-sign compression as examples.

    For top-kk, retain the kk coordinates of uu with largest magnitudes and set the others to zero. With compression ratio r=k/dr=k/d, it satisfies ∥C(u)−u∥2≤(1−r)∥u∥2\|C(u)-u\|^2\leq(1-r)\|u\|^2, so one may take q=1−rq=\sqrt{1-r}. For scaled-sign compression, C(u)=(∥u∥1/d)sign⁡(u)C(u)=(\|u\|_1/d)\operatorname{sign}(u), and the paper gives q=1−∥u∥12/(d∥u∥2)q=\sqrt{1-\|u\|_1^2/(d\|u\|^2)} for nonzero uu. These biased operators can be used with FedCAMS’s error-feedback residuals; the paper contrasts this with direct compression approaches that generally require an unbiased compressor.

  6. Knowl 6 — FedCAMS preserves the full-participation rate for fixed compression strength

    theoretical result

    For f(x)=1m∑i=1mFi(x)f(x)=\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^{m}F_i(x) with all clients participating each round, assume client losses are LL-smooth, stochastic gradients have norm at most GG, local and global variances are bounded by σl2\sigma_l^2 and σg2\sigma_g^2, respectively, and the compressor satisfies E∥C(u)−u∥≤q∥u∥\mathbb{E}\|C(u)-u\|\leq q\|u\| for q<1q<1. FedCAMS uses KK local SGD steps, error feedback, and max stabilization. Write C1=β11−β1+2q1−q2C_1=\frac{\beta_1}{1-\beta_1}+\frac{2q}{1-q^2} and C2=β12(1−β1)2+4q2(1−q2)2C_2=\frac{\beta_1^2}{(1-\beta_1)^2}+\frac{4q^2}{(1-q^2)^2}. A sufficient local-step-size condition in the theorem is

    ηl≤min⁡{18KL,ϵKCβ,q((3+2C2)ηL+22(1−β2)G)},Cβ,q=4β2(1+q2)33(1−q2)2K2G2+ϵ.\eta_l\leq\min\left\{\frac{1}{8KL},\frac{\epsilon}{K C_{\beta,q}\big((3+2C_2)\eta L+2\sqrt{2(1-\beta_2)}G\big)}\right\},\qquad C_{\beta,q}=\sqrt{\frac{4\beta_2(1+q^2)^3}{3(1-q^2)^2}K^2G^2+\epsilon}.

    Under these conditions, the theorem bounds min⁡t≤TE∥∇f(xt)∥2\min_{t\leq T}\mathbb{E}\|\nabla f(x_t)\|^2 by a term proportional to 4β2(1+q2)33(1−q2)2ηl2K2G2+ϵ\sqrt{\frac{4\beta_2(1+q^2)^3}{3(1-q^2)^2}\eta_l^2K^2G^2+\epsilon} times the optimization and variance terms. With η=Θ(Km)\eta=\Theta(\sqrt{Km}) and ηl=Θ(1/TK)\eta_l=\Theta(1/\sqrt{TK}), the resulting rate for fixed q<1q<1 is O(1/TKm)O(1/\sqrt{TKm}), matching the rate of uncompressed FedAMS. The paper notes that the compression-dependent constants worsen as qq approaches 11.

  7. Knowl 7 — FedCAMS has a partial-participation bound with additional sampling and compression terms

    theoretical result

    Let mm clients optimize f(x)=1m∑i=1mFi(x)f(x)=\frac{1}{m}\sum_{i=1}^{m}F_i(x), with nn clients sampled uniformly without replacement each round. Assume each loss is LL-smooth, stochastic gradients have norm at most GG, local and global variances are bounded by σl2\sigma_l^2 and σg2\sigma_g^2, and the biased compressor satisfies E∥C(u)−u∥≤q∥u∥\mathbb{E}\|C(u)-u\|\leq q\|u\|, with q<1q<1. For FedCAMS with KK local steps, define

    A=4β2(1+q2)33(1−q2)2ηl2K2G2+ϵ,C1=β11−β1+2q1−q2,D=ηL+2(1−β2)G.A=\frac{4\beta_2(1+q^2)^3}{3(1-q^2)^2}\eta_l^2K^2G^2+\epsilon,\qquad C_1=\frac{\beta_1}{1-\beta_1}+\frac{2q}{1-q^2},\qquad D=\eta L+\sqrt{2(1-\beta_2)}G.

    The theorem’s local-step-size condition is

    ηl≤min⁡{18KL,n(m−1)ϵ48m(n−1)K4β2(1+q2)33(1−q2)2K2G2+ϵ D}.\eta_l\leq\min\left\{\frac{1}{8KL},\frac{n(m-1)\epsilon}{48m(n-1)K\sqrt{\frac{4\beta_2(1+q^2)^3}{3(1-q^2)^2}K^2G^2+\epsilon}\,D}\right\}.

    Under this condition, the paper establishes

    min⁡t≤TE∥∇f(xt)∥2≤8A[f(x1)−f∗ηηlKT+ΨT+Φ],\min_{t\leq T}\mathbb{E}\|\nabla f(x_t)\|^2\leq 8\sqrt{A}\left[\frac{f(x_1)-f_*}{\eta\eta_lKT}+\frac{\Psi}{T}+\Phi\right],

    where f∗f_* is a lower bound on the objective, Ψ=C1G2d/ϵ+2C12ηηlKLG2d/ϵ\Psi=C_1G^2\sqrt{d/\epsilon}+2C_1^2\eta\eta_lKLG^2d/\epsilon, and

    Φ=C1ηηlKLG2ϵ+5ηl2KL22ϵ(σl2+6Kσg2)+Dηlσl2nϵ+Dηl(m−n)n(m−1)ϵ[15K2L2ηl2(σl2+6Kσg2)+3Kσg2].\Phi=\frac{C_1\eta\eta_lKLG^2}{\epsilon}+\frac{5\eta_l^2KL^2}{\sqrt{2\epsilon}}(\sigma_l^2+6K\sigma_g^2)+\frac{D\eta_l\sigma_l^2}{n\epsilon}+\frac{D\eta_l(m-n)}{n(m-1)\epsilon}\left[15K^2L^2\eta_l^2(\sigma_l^2+6K\sigma_g^2)+3K\sigma_g^2\right].

    Here dd is the parameter dimension and β1,β2∈[0,1)\beta_1,\beta_2\in[0,1). Relative to full participation, the bound contains additional terms from client sampling; compression strength also enters through qq and C1C_1.

  8. Knowl 8 — FedAMS improves benchmark performance over several federated optimizers

    empirical result

    The experiments used 100 clients, with 10 selected per round (a 0.1 participation ratio), three local epochs per round, and batch size 20. The evaluated image datasets were CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100; models were ResNet-18 and ConvMixer-256-8. Training loss and test accuracy were tracked over 500 global rounds.

    Across the CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 comparisons, FedAMS generally achieved the best final training loss and test accuracy among the tested adaptive methods and FedAvg. On ResNet-18, FedAMS and FedYogi performed similarly and better overall than FedAdam and FedAMSGrad; FedAvg sometimes had lower training loss than those two baselines while reaching test accuracy closer to FedAMS and FedYogi. On ConvMixer-256-8, the adaptive methods consistently outperformed FedAvg in both metrics, with FedAMS reported as best. Separate CIFAR-10 curves showed faster convergence as the number of participating clients increased from 5 to 10 to 20. Increasing local epochs from 3 to 10, 30, or 100 sped up training-loss convergence, but did not yield a clear test-accuracy advantage.

  9. Knowl 9 — FedCAMS reduces communication while retaining accuracy, with results depending on model and compressor

    empirical result

    On CIFAR-10, the authors compared FedCAMS using scaled-sign compression and top-kk compression at ratios r∈{1/64,1/128,1/256}r\in\{1/64,1/128,1/256\} against uncompressed FedAMS, measuring training loss and test accuracy against both rounds and client-to-server communication bits. For ResNet-18, scaled-sign and top-kk with r=1/64r=1/64 gave similar test-accuracy behavior and the best reported trade-off between accuracy and communication. More aggressive top-kk compression reduced communication but slowed convergence. For ConvMixer-256-8, scaled-sign FedCAMS reached roughly the training loss and test accuracy of FedAMS with substantially less communication, while top-kk variants performed worse; among those variants, r=1/64r=1/64 performed best but used more bits than the more compressed settings.

    For the ResNet-18, CIFAR-10, 500-round communication comparison, the paper reports these approximate bit counts as uncompressed / one-way compression / two-way compression: scaled-sign, 3.58×1011/1.84×1011/1.12×10103.58\times10^{11}/1.84\times10^{11}/1.12\times10^{10}; top-kk with r=1/64r=1/64, the same values; top-kk with r=1/128r=1/128, 3.58×1011/1.82×1011/5.59×1093.58\times10^{11}/1.82\times10^{11}/5.59\times10^9; and top-kk with r=1/256r=1/256, 3.58×1011/1.80×1011/2.79×1093.58\times10^{11}/1.80\times10^{11}/2.79\times10^9. The one-way figures compress client uploads while retaining uncompressed server broadcasts; two-way figures are communication estimates, not the setting analyzed in the main convergence results. The paper also states that a dd-dimensional scaled-sign message costs 32+d32+d bits and that its cost is roughly comparable to top-kk at r=1/64r=1/64.

  10. Knowl 10 — The convergence analysis does not cover two-way compression under partial participation

    limitation

    FedCAMS’s convergence analysis compresses client-to-server communication while leaving server-to-client broadcasts uncompressed. The authors state that extending the analysis to two-way compression is nontrivial, particularly with partial participation: biased compression and error feedback can make it difficult to guarantee that clients’ copies of the global model remain synchronized. They note that compressing broadcasts is straightforward in the full-participation setting, but leave the partial-participation synchronization problem and its analysis for future work.

Coverage note — The paper’s detailed proof steps and supporting lemmas are omitted because they serve the stated convergence theorems rather than constituting standalone contributions; ancillary hyperparameter searches and the epsilon ablation are also omitted because they are not central to reconstructing the main method or findings.

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Citation

MLA
Wang, Y., et al. “Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning”. International Conference on Machine Learning, vol. 162, 2022, pp. 22802–38, https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/wang22o.html.
APA
Wang, Y., Lin, L., & Chen, J. (2022). Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning. International Conference on Machine Learning, 162, 22802–22838. https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/wang22o.html
Chicago
Wang, Y., L. Lin, and J. Chen. 2022. “Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning”. International Conference on Machine Learning 162: 22802–38. https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/wang22o.html.
Harvard
Wang, Y., Lin, L. and Chen, J. (2022) “Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning”, International Conference on Machine Learning. PMLR, pp. 22802–22838. Available at: https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/wang22o.html.
Vancouver
1. Wang Y, Lin L, Chen J (2022) Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning. In: International Conference on Machine Learning. PMLR, pp 22802–22838

BibTeX

@InProceedings{pmlr-v162-wang22o,
  title = 	 {Communication-Efficient Adaptive Federated Learning},
  author =       {Wang, Yujia and Lin, Lu and Chen, Jinghui},
  booktitle = 	 {Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Machine Learning},
  pages = 	 {22802--22838},
  year = 	 {2022},
  editor = 	 {Chaudhuri, Kamalika and Jegelka, Stefanie and Song, Le and Szepesvari, Csaba and Niu, Gang and Sabato, Sivan},
  volume = 	 {162},
  series = 	 {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research},
  month = 	 {17--23 Jul},
  publisher =    {PMLR},
  pdf = 	 {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/wang22o/wang22o.pdf},
  url = 	 {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v162/wang22o.html},
  abstract = 	 {Federated learning is a machine learning training paradigm that enables clients to jointly train models without sharing their own localized data. However, the implementation of federated learning in practice still faces numerous challenges, such as the large communication overhead due to the repetitive server-client synchronization and the lack of adaptivity by SGD-based model updates. Despite that various methods have been proposed for reducing the communication cost by gradient compression or quantization, and the federated versions of adaptive optimizers such as FedAdam are proposed to add more adaptivity, the current federated learning framework still cannot solve the aforementioned challenges all at once. In this paper, we propose a novel communication-efficient adaptive federated learning method (FedCAMS) with theoretical convergence guarantees. We show that in the nonconvex stochastic optimization setting, our proposed FedCAMS achieves the same convergence rate of $O(\frac{1}{\sqrt{TKm}})$ as its non-compressed counterparts. Extensive experiments on various benchmarks verify our theoretical analysis.}
}
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