FedSUM Family: Efficient Federated Learning Methods under Arbitrary Client Participation

ICLR 2026 Conference Submission16500 Authors

Keywords: Federated Learning, Distributed Learning

Abstract: Federated Learning (FL) methods are often designed for specific client participation patterns, limiting their applicability in practical deployments. We introduce the FedSUM family of algorithms, which supports arbitrary client participation without additional assumptions on data heterogeneity. Our framework models participation variability with two delay metrics, the maximum delay $\tau_{\max}$ and the average delay $\tau_{\text{avg}}$. The FedSUM family comprises three variants: FedSUM-B (basic version), FedSUM (standard version), and FedSUM-CR (communication-reduced version). We provide unified convergence guarantees demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach across diverse participation patterns, thereby broadening the applicability of FL in real-world scenarios.

Primary Area: optimization

Submission Number: 16500