# Disentangled Federated Learning for Tackling Attributes Skew via Invariant Aggregation and Diversity Transferring

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.06818 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06818/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jun 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Invariant Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02893/) (2019)
- [Moment Matching for Multi-Source Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01754/) (2018)
- [Learning deep representations by mutual information estimation and maximization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.06670/) (2018)
- [Personalized Federated Learning with Moreau Envelopes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08848/) (2020)
- [FedBN: Federated Learning on Non-IID Features via Local Batch Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07623/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning with Personalization Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00818/) (2019)
- [Causal inference using invariant prediction: identification and confidence intervals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.01332/) (2015)
- [Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10056/) (2021)
- [Think Locally, Act Globally: Federated Learning with Local and Global Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01523/) (2020)
- [Personalized Cross-Silo Federated Learning on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03797/) (2020)
- [Characterizing and Avoiding Negative Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.09751/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning of a Mixture of Global and Local Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05516/) (2020)
- [Personalized Federated Learning with First Order Model Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08565/) (2020)
- [Federated Meta-Learning with Fast Convergence and Efficient Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07876/) (2018)
- [Federated Evaluation of On-device Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10252/) (2019)
- [Domain Agnostic Learning with Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12347/) (2019)
- [KD3A: Unsupervised Multi-Source Decentralized Domain Adaptation via Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09757/) (2020)
- [Fed-ensemble: Improving Generalization through Model Ensembling in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10663/) (2021)
- [Hashing with Mutual Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.00974/) (2018)
- [MIHash: Online Hashing with Mutual Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.08919/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Heterogeneous Federated Learning: State-of-the-art and Research Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10616/) (2023)
- [Federated Adaptive Prompt Tuning for Multi-Domain Collaborative Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07864/) (2022)
- [FedRA: A Random Allocation Strategy for Federated Tuning to Unleash the Power of Heterogeneous Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11227/) (2023)
- [FedDEO: Description-Enhanced One-Shot Federated Learning with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19953/) (2024)
- [From Challenges and Pitfalls to Recommendations and Opportunities: Implementing Federated Learning in Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09727/) (2024)
- [FOOGD: Federated Collaboration for Both Out-of-distribution Generalization and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11397/) (2024)
- [Advances in Robust Federated Learning: A Survey with Heterogeneity Considerations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09839/) (2024)
- [FuseFL: One-Shot Federated Learning through the Lens of Causality with Progressive Model Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20380/) (2024)
- [Exploring Vacant Classes in Label-Skewed Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02329/) (2024)
- [HyperFed: Hyperbolic Prototypes Exploration with Consistent Aggregation for Non-IID Data in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14384/) (2023)
- [Influence-Oriented Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03315/) (2024)
- [FediOS: Decoupling Orthogonal Subspaces for Personalization in Feature-skew Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18559/) (2023)
- [On Knowledge Editing in Federated Learning: Perspectives, Challenges, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01431/) (2023)
- [Federated Out-of-Distribution Generalization: A Causal Augmentation View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19882/) (2025)
- [Federated Deconfounding and Debiasing Learning for Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04979/) (2025)
- [Joint Local Relational Augmentation and Global Nash Equilibrium for Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11646/) (2023)
- [Global Intervention and Distillation for Federated Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00850/) (2025)
- [Take Your Pick: Enabling Effective Personalized Federated Learning within Low-dimensional Feature Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13995/) (2023)
- [Disentangle Estimation of Causal Effects from Cross-Silo Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02154/) (2024)
- [Federated Adapter on Foundation Models: An Out-Of-Distribution Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01075/) (2025)
- [Unlocking the Potential of Federated Learning for Deeper Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02701/) (2023)
- [Client-supervised Federated Learning: Towards One-model-for-all Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19499/) (2024)
- [FedGS: Federated Gradient Scaling for Heterogeneous Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11701/) (2024)
- [FedPH: Privacy-enhanced Heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11705/) (2023)
- [Personalized Federated Learning via ADMM with Moreau Envelope](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06756/) (2023)
- [On ADMM in Heterogeneous Federated Learning: Personalization, Robustness, and Fairness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16397/) (2024)
- [Invariant Federated Learning for Edge Intelligence: Mitigating Heterogeneity and Asynchrony via Exit Strategy and Invariant Penalty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06158/) (2025)
- [Harmonizing Generalization and Personalization in Ring-topology Decentralized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19103/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Attributes skew hinders the current federated learning (FL) frameworks from consistent optimization directions among the clients, which inevitably leads to performance reduction and unstable convergence. The core problems lie in that: 1) Domain-specific attributes, which are non-causal and only locally valid, are indeliberately mixed into global aggregation. 2) The one-stage optimizations of entangled attributes cannot simultaneously satisfy two conflicting objectives, i.e., generalization and personalization. To cope with these, we proposed disentangled federated learning (DFL) to disentangle the domain-specific and cross-invariant attributes into two complementary branches, which are trained by the proposed alternating local-global optimization independently. Importantly, convergence analysis proves that the FL system can be stably converged even if incomplete client models participate in the global aggregation, which greatly expands the application scope of FL. Extensive experiments verify that DFL facilitates FL with higher performance, better interpretability, and faster convergence rate, compared with SOTA FL methods on both manually synthesized and realistic attributes skew datasets.