# rAge-k: Communication-Efficient Federated Learning Using Age Factor

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22192 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.22192/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 25 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [signSGD: Compressed Optimisation for Non-Convex Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04434/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning with Personalization Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00818/) (2019)
- [Exploiting Shared Representations for Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07078/) (2021)
- [Clustered Federated Learning: Model-Agnostic Distributed Multi-Task Optimization under Privacy Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01991/) (2019)
- [Deep Gradient Compression: Reducing the Communication Bandwidth for Distributed Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01887/) (2017)
- [Robust and Communication-Efficient Federated Learning from Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02891/) (2019)
- [Sparsified SGD with Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07599/) (2018)
- [FedPAQ: A Communication-Efficient Federated Learning Method with Periodic Averaging and Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13014/) (2019)
- [TernGrad: Ternary Gradients to Reduce Communication in Distributed Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07878/) (2017)
- [Qsparse-local-SGD: Distributed SGD with Quantization, Sparsification, and Local Computations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02367/) (2019)
- [Age of Information: An Introduction and Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08564/) (2020)
- [Age-Based Scheduling Policy for Federated Learning in Mobile Edge Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.14648/) (2019)
- [rTop-k: A Statistical Estimation Approach to Distributed SGD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10761/) (2020)
- [FLIS: Clustered Federated Learning via Inference Similarity for Non-IID Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09754/) (2022)
- [Timely Communication in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15831/) (2020)
- [FedGradNorm: Personalized Federated Gradient-Normalized Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13663/) (2022)
- [Timely Distributed Computation with Stragglers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03564/) (2019)
- [Age-Based Coded Computation for Bias Reduction in Distributed Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.01816/) (2020)
- [Personalized Decentralized Multi-Task Learning Over Dynamic Communication Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11268/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Age-Aware Edge-Blind Federated Learning via Over-the-Air Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02469/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) is a collaborative approach where multiple clients, coordinated by a parameter server (PS), train a unified machine-learning model. The approach, however, suffers from two key challenges: data heterogeneity and communication overhead. Data heterogeneity refers to inconsistencies in model training arising from heterogeneous data at different clients. Communication overhead arises from the large volumes of parameter updates exchanged between the PS and clients. Existing solutions typically address these challenges separately. This paper introduces a new communication-efficient algorithm that uses the age of information metric to simultaneously tackle both limitations of FL. We introduce age vectors at the PS, which keep track of how often the different model parameters are updated from the clients. The PS uses this to selectively request updates for specific gradient indices from each client. Further, the PS employs age vectors to identify clients with statistically similar data and group them into clusters. The PS combines the age vectors of the clustered clients to efficiently coordinate gradient index updates among clients within a cluster. We evaluate our approach using the MNIST and CIFAR10 datasets in highly non-i.i.d. settings. The experimental results show that our proposed method can expedite training, surpassing other communication-efficient strategies in efficiency.