2020/10/28 by Sihan Zeng, Zeng, Sihan, Thinh T. Doan +3
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Neural Networks Stability and Synchronization #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Optimization and Control (math.OC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.15088
openalex publication_date 2020/10/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study a decentralized variant of stochastic approximation, a data-driven approach for finding the root of an operator under noisy measurements. A network of agents, each with its own operator and data observations, cooperatively find the fixed point of the aggregate operator over a decentralized communication graph. Our main contribution is to provide a finite-time analysis of this decentralized stochastic approximation method when the data observed at each agent are sampled from a Markov process; this lack of independence makes the iterates biased and (potentially) unbounded. Under fairly standard assumptions, we show that the convergence rate of the proposed method is essentially the same as if the samples were independent, differing only by a log factor that accounts for the mixing time of the Markov processes. The key idea in our analysis is to introduce a novel Razumikhin-Lyapunov function, motivated by the one used in analyzing the stability of delayed ordinary differential equations. We also discuss applications of the proposed method on a number of interesting learning problems in multi-agent systems.