# Personalized Federated Learning via Sequential Layer Expansion in Representation Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.17799 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17799/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [On First-Order Meta-Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02999/) (2018)
- [Federated Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10467/) (2017)
- [Federated Learning with Personalization Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00818/) (2019)
- [Exploiting Shared Representations for Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07078/) (2021)
- [Towards Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00710/) (2021)
- [FedMD: Heterogenous Federated Learning via Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03581/) (2019)
- [Think Locally, Act Globally: Federated Learning with Local and Global Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01523/) (2020)
- [FedHealth: A Federated Transfer Learning Framework for Wearable Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09173/) (2019)
- [FedBABU: Towards Enhanced Representation for Federated Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06042/) (2021)
- [When Do Curricula Work in Federated Learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12712/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning ensures the privacy of clients by conducting distributed training on individual client devices and sharing only the model weights with a central server. However, in real-world scenarios, the heterogeneity of data among clients necessitates appropriate personalization methods. In this paper, we aim to address this heterogeneity using a form of parameter decoupling known as representation learning. Representation learning divides deep learning models into 'base' and 'head' components. The base component, capturing common features across all clients, is shared with the server, while the head component, capturing unique features specific to individual clients, remains local. We propose a new representation learning-based approach that suggests decoupling the entire deep learning model into more densely divided parts with the application of suitable scheduling methods, which can benefit not only data heterogeneity but also class heterogeneity. In this paper, we compare and analyze two layer scheduling approaches, namely forward (textitVanilla) and backward (textitAnti), in the context of data and class heterogeneity among clients. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm, when compared to existing personalized federated learning algorithms, achieves increased accuracy, especially under challenging conditions, while reducing computation costs.