Adaptive client-progress thresholds for FedPCD

Determine whether adaptive client-dependent or round-dependent values of the FedPCD constraint parameter \(\tau\) improve performance across varying levels of data heterogeneity, instead of using a fixed value for all secondary constraints.

Background

FedPCD currently applies one fixed progress-threshold parameter τ\tau to every client-level secondary constraint. The experiments indicate sensitivity to the degree of statistical heterogeneity, suggesting that a threshold adapted to individual clients or communication rounds could improve the method. The paper explicitly identifies this direction as unresolved, but does not establish whether such adaptation would yield gains.

References

Several directions remain open as limitations of the FedPCD framework. Firstly, we use a fixed $\tau$ parameter across all secondary constraints, although the observed sensitivity to heterogeneity suggests that an adaptive client- or round-dependent parameter may further improve our gains.

— FedPCD: Priority-Constrained Federated Aggregation  (2610.13508 - Irshaid et al., 9 Oct 2026) in Conclusion