Wireless Aggregation Latency in Edge Learning with Fractional Power Control

Abstract

When multiple wireless edge servers communicate with a common core server, their uplink transmissions create a multiple-access bottleneck that affects the la- tency of distributed edge learning systems. This paper analyzes this bottleneck and investigates the use of fractional power control (FPC) to mitigate it in hierarchi- cal federated learning (HFL). Modeling the spatial deployment of edge servers and wireless channel gains using stochastic wireless models, we analytically character- ize the mean core aggregation latency (CAL) under a TDMA aggregation policy. We formulate the cumulative core aggregation latency as a renewal reward pro- cess, where each learning round constitutes a renewal cycle and task completion defines the stopping time. This representation yields an exact decomposition of the mean cumulative aggregation latency into the product of the expected stopping round and the expected per-round aggregation latency under iid server selection. We then derive analytical upper bounds on the expected per-round latency under fractional power control (FPC). Numerical results demonstrate that even modest FPC exponents substantially reduce CAL across a wide range of deployment scenar- ios. These results highlight fractional power control as a simple and model-agnostic mechanism for mitigating wireless aggregation bottlenecks in edge learning systems.