# Federated Learning via Input-Output Collaborative Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.14478 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14478/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08935/) (2019)
- [Measuring the Effects of Non-Identical Data Distribution for Federated Visual Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06335/) (2019)
- [Inverting Gradients -- How easy is it to break privacy in federated learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14053/) (2020)
- [Ensemble Distillation for Robust Model Fusion in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07242/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning with Matched Averaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06440/) (2020)
- [Identifying the Best Machine Learning Algorithms for Brain Tumor Segmentation, Progression Assessment, and Overall Survival Prediction in the BRATS Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02629/) (2018)
- [fastMRI: An Open Dataset and Benchmarks for Accelerated MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08839/) (2018)
- [FedMD: Heterogenous Federated Learning via Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03581/) (2019)
- [Dreaming to Distill: Data-free Knowledge Transfer via DeepInversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08795/) (2019)
- [Fair Resource Allocation in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10497/) (2019)
- [Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10056/) (2021)
- [Scalable Private Learning with PATE](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08908/) (2018)
- [Communication-Efficient On-Device Machine Learning: Federated Distillation and Augmentation under Non-IID Private Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11479/) (2018)
- [Data-Free Learning of Student Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01186/) (2019)
- [SCAFFOLD: Stochastic Controlled Averaging for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06378/) (2019)
- [Learning From Multiple Experts: Self-paced Knowledge Distillation for Long-tailed Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01536/) (2020)
- [Fine-tuning Global Model via Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Non-IID Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09249/) (2022)
- [Federated Visual Classification with Real-World Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08082/) (2020)
- [Zero-Shot Knowledge Distillation in Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08114/) (2019)
- [DP-CGAN: Differentially Private Synthetic Data and Label Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09700/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Federated Model Heterogeneous Matryoshka Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00488/) (2024)
- [dFLMoE: Decentralized Federated Learning via Mixture of Experts for Medical Data Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10412/) (2025)
- [Unity is Power: Semi-Asynchronous Collaborative Training of Large-Scale Models with Structured Pruning in Resource-Limited Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08457/) (2024)
- [Mjolnir: Breaking the Shield of Perturbation-Protected Gradients via Adaptive Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05285/) (2024)
- [Soft-Label Caching and Sharpening for Communication-Efficient Federated Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19602/) (2025)
- [On the Fast Adaptation of Delayed Clients in Decentralized Federated Learning: A Centroid-Aligned Distillation Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02993/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) is a machine learning paradigm in which distributed local nodes collaboratively train a central model without sharing individually held private data. Existing FL methods either iteratively share local model parameters or deploy co-distillation. However, the former is highly susceptible to private data leakage, and the latter design relies on the prerequisites of task-relevant real data. Instead, we propose a data-free FL framework based on local-to-central collaborative distillation with direct input and output space exploitation. Our design eliminates any requirement of recursive local parameter exchange or auxiliary task-relevant data to transfer knowledge, thereby giving direct privacy control to local users. In particular, to cope with the inherent data heterogeneity across locals, our technique learns to distill input on which each local model produces consensual yet unique results to represent each expertise. Our proposed FL framework achieves notable privacy-utility trade-offs with extensive experiments on image classification and segmentation tasks under various real-world heterogeneous federated learning settings on both natural and medical images.