# Performance Analysis of Decentralized Federated Learning Deployments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.11828 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11828/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10592/) (2023)
- [On the Convergence of FedAvg on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02189/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00582/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning on Non-IID Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06843/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning for Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07914/) (2021)
- [Decentralized Federated Learning: Fundamentals, State of the Art, Frameworks, Trends, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08413/) (2022)
- [Network Topology and Communication-Computation Tradeoffs in Decentralized Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.08765/) (2017)
- [Decentralized Federated Learning: A Survey and Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01603/) (2023)
- [FedHiSyn: A Hierarchical Synchronous Federated Learning Framework for Resource and Data Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10546/) (2022)
- [Decentralized Wireless Federated Learning with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09142/) (2021)
- [When Decentralized Optimization Meets Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02570/) (2023)

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

- [DFedReweighting: A Unified Framework for Objective-Oriented Reweighting in Decentralized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12022/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The widespread adoption of smartphones and smart wearable devices has led to the widespread use of Centralized Federated Learning (CFL) for training powerful machine learning models while preserving data privacy. However, CFL faces limitations due to its overreliance on a central server, which impacts latency and system robustness. Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) is introduced to address these challenges. It facilitates direct collaboration among participating devices without relying on a central server. Each device can independently connect with other devices and share model parameters. This work explores crucial factors influencing the convergence and generalization capacity of DFL models, emphasizing network topologies, non-IID data distribution, and training strategies. We first derive the convergence rate of different DFL model deployment strategies. Then, we comprehensively analyze various network topologies (e.g., linear, ring, star, and mesh) with different degrees of non-IID data and evaluate them over widely adopted machine learning models (e.g., classical, deep neural networks, and Large Language Models) and real-world datasets. The results reveal that models converge to the optimal one for IID data. However, the convergence rate is inversely proportional to the degree of non-IID data distribution. Our findings will serve as valuable guidelines for designing effective DFL model deployments in practical applications.