Research

Paper

TESTING March 16, 2026

Joint Routing and Model Pruning for Decentralized Federated Learning in Bandwidth-Constrained Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Authors

Xiaoyu He, Weicai Li, Tiejun Lv, Xi Yu

Abstract

Decentralized federated learning (D-FL) enables privacy-preserving training without a central server, but multi-hop model exchanges and aggregation are often bottlenecked by communication resource constraints. To address this issue, we propose a joint routing-and-pruning framework that optimizes routing paths and pruning rates to maintain communication latency within prescribed limits. We analyze how the sum of model biases across all clients affects the convergence bound of D-FL and formulate an optimization problem that maximizes the model retention rate to minimize these biases under communication constraints. Further analysis reveals that each client's model retention rate is path-dependent, which reduces the original problem to a routing optimization. Leveraging this insight, we develop a routing algorithm that selects latency-efficient transmission paths, allowing more parameters to be delivered within the time budget and thereby improving D-FL convergence. Simulations demonstrate that, compared with unpruned systems, the proposed framework reduces average transmission latency by 27.8% and improves testing accuracy by approximately 12%. Furthermore, relative to standard benchmark routing algorithms, the proposed routing method improves accuracy by roughly 8%.

Metadata

arXiv ID: 2603.15188
Provider: ARXIV
Primary Category: cs.LG
Published: 2026-03-16
Fetched: 2026-03-17 06:02

Related papers

Raw Data (Debug)
{
  "raw_xml": "<entry>\n    <id>http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15188v1</id>\n    <title>Joint Routing and Model Pruning for Decentralized Federated Learning in Bandwidth-Constrained Multi-Hop Wireless Networks</title>\n    <updated>2026-03-16T12:25:27Z</updated>\n    <link href='https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15188v1' rel='alternate' type='text/html'/>\n    <link href='https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.15188v1' rel='related' title='pdf' type='application/pdf'/>\n    <summary>Decentralized federated learning (D-FL) enables privacy-preserving training without a central server, but multi-hop model exchanges and aggregation are often bottlenecked by communication resource constraints. To address this issue, we propose a joint routing-and-pruning framework that optimizes routing paths and pruning rates to maintain communication latency within prescribed limits. We analyze how the sum of model biases across all clients affects the convergence bound of D-FL and formulate an optimization problem that maximizes the model retention rate to minimize these biases under communication constraints. Further analysis reveals that each client's model retention rate is path-dependent, which reduces the original problem to a routing optimization. Leveraging this insight, we develop a routing algorithm that selects latency-efficient transmission paths, allowing more parameters to be delivered within the time budget and thereby improving D-FL convergence. Simulations demonstrate that, compared with unpruned systems, the proposed framework reduces average transmission latency by 27.8% and improves testing accuracy by approximately 12%. Furthermore, relative to standard benchmark routing algorithms, the proposed routing method improves accuracy by roughly 8%.</summary>\n    <category scheme='http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom' term='cs.LG'/>\n    <category scheme='http://arxiv.org/schemas/atom' term='cs.NI'/>\n    <published>2026-03-16T12:25:27Z</published>\n    <arxiv:primary_category term='cs.LG'/>\n    <author>\n      <name>Xiaoyu He</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Weicai Li</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Tiejun Lv</name>\n    </author>\n    <author>\n      <name>Xi Yu</name>\n    </author>\n  </entry>"
}