Taming subnet-drift in D2D-enabled fog learning: a hierarchical gradient tracking approach

Federated learning (FL) encounters scalability challenges when implemented over fog networks. Semi-decentralized FL (SD-FL) proposes a solution that divides model cooperation into two stages: at the lower stage, device-to-device (D2D) communications is employed for local model aggregations within subnetworks (subnets), while the upper stage handles device-server (DS) communications for global model aggregations. However, existing SD-FL schemes are based on gradient diversity assumptions that become performance bottlenecks as data distributions become more heterogeneous. In this work, we develop semi-decentralized gradient tracking (SD-GT), the first SD-FL methodology that removes the need for such assumptions by incorporating tracking terms into device updates for each communication layer. Analytical characterization of SD-GT reveals convergence upper bounds for both non-convex and strongly-convex problems, for a suitable choice of step size. We employ the resulting bounds in the development of a co-optimization algorithm for optimizing subnet sampling rates and D2D rounds according to a performance-efficiency trade-off. Our subsequent numerical evaluations demonstrate that SD-GT obtains substantial improvements in trained model quality and communication cost relative to baselines in SD-FL and gradient tracking on several datasets.