Hierarchical Federated Learning with Momentum Acceleration in Multi-Tier Networks

In this paper, we propose Hierarchical Federated Learning with Momentum Acceleration (HierMo), a three-tier worker-edge-cloud federated learning algorithm that applies momentum for training acceleration. Momentum is calculated and aggregated in the three tiers. We provide convergence analysis for HierMo, showing a convergence rate of O(1/T). In the analysis, we develop a new approach to characterize model aggregation, momentum aggregation, and their interactions. Based on this result, {we prove that HierMo achieves a tighter convergence upper bound compared with HierFAVG without momentum}. We also propose HierOPT, which optimizes the aggregation periods (worker-edge and edge-cloud aggregation periods) to minimize the loss given a limited training time.

Federated Learning with Nesterov Accelerated Gradient Momentum Method

Federated learning (FL) is a fast-developing technique that allows multiple workers to train a global model based on a distributed dataset. Conventional FL employs gradient descent algorithm, which may not be efficient enough. It is well known that Nesterov Accelerated Gradient (NAG) is more advantageous in centralized training environment, but it is not clear how to quantify the benefits of NAG in FL so far. In this work, we focus on a version of FL based on NAG (FedNAG) and provide a detailed convergence analysis. The result is compared with conventional FL based on gradient descent. One interesting conclusion is that as long as the learning step size is sufficiently small, FedNAG outperforms FedAvg. Extensive experiments based on real-world datasets are conducted, verifying our conclusions and confirming the better convergence performance of FedNAG.