# Multi-level Personalized Federated Learning on Heterogeneous and Long-Tailed Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06413 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06413/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [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)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [Fashion-MNIST: a Novel Image Dataset for Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07747/) (2017)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning: Challenges, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07873/) (2019)
- [On the Convergence of FedAvg on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02189/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00582/) (2018)
- [Learning Imbalanced Datasets with Label-Distribution-Aware Margin Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07413/) (2019)
- [Tackling the Objective Inconsistency Problem in Heterogeneous Federated Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07481/) (2020)
- [Decoupling Representation and Classifier for Long-Tailed Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09217/) (2019)
- [Federated Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10467/) (2017)
- [Ditto: Fair and Robust Federated Learning Through Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04221/) (2020)
- [Neural Graph Collaborative Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08108/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning Based on Dynamic Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04263/) (2021)
- [Exploiting Shared Representations for Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07078/) (2021)
- [Clustered Federated Learning: Model-Agnostic Distributed Multi-Task Optimization under Privacy Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01991/) (2019)
- [Deep Long-Tailed Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04596/) (2021)
- [BBN: Bilateral-Branch Network with Cumulative Learning for Long-Tailed Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02413/) (2019)
- [The Non-IID Data Quagmire of Decentralized Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.00189/) (2019)
- [Federated learning with hierarchical clustering of local updates to improve training on non-IID data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11791/) (2020)
- [Feature Space Augmentation for Long-Tailed Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03673/) (2020)
- [M2m: Imbalanced Classification via Major-to-minor Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00431/) (2020)
- [Influence-Balanced Loss for Imbalanced Visual Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02444/) (2021)
- [Tackling Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning with Class Prototypes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02758/) (2022)
- [Federated Learning on Heterogeneous and Long-Tailed Data via Classifier Re-Training with Federated Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13399/) (2022)
- [Fully Decentralized Joint Learning of Personalized Models and Collaboration Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08460/) (2019)
- [FEDIC: Federated Learning on Non-IID and Long-Tailed Data via Calibrated Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00172/) (2022)
- [Cloud-Device Collaborative Adaptation to Continual Changing Environments in the Real-world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00972/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [MoLe-VLA: Dynamic Layer-skipping Vision Language Action Model via Mixture-of-Layers for Efficient Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20384/) (2025)
- [Decoupling General and Personalized Knowledge in Federated Learning via Additive and Low-Rank Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19931/) (2024)
- [Decomposing the Neurons: Activation Sparsity via Mixture of Experts for Continual Test Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16486/) (2024)
- [Federated Hybrid Training and Self-Adversarial Distillation: Towards Robust Edge Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19354/) (2024)
- [APFL: Analytic Personalized Federated Learning via Dual-Stream Least Squares](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10732/) (2025)
- [Mjolnir: Breaking the Shield of Perturbation-Protected Gradients via Adaptive Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05285/) (2024)
- [Personalized Additive Modeling for Multi-level Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16472/) (2024)
- [FedTSA: A Cluster-based Two-Stage Aggregation Method for Model-heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05098/) (2024)
- [UrbanMind: Towards Urban General Intelligence via Tool-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Multilevel Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04706/) (2025)
- [FedHiP: Heterogeneity-Invariant Personalized Federated Learning Through Closed-Form Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04470/) (2025)
- [GAPSL: A Gradient-Aligned Parallel Split Learning over Data-Heterogeneous Edge Computing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18540/) (2026)
- [MoASE++: Mixture of Activation Sparsity Experts with Domain-Adaptive On-policy Distillation for Continual Test Time Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17743/) (2026)
- [FedADB: Class Anchor-Driven Dual-Branch Federated Learning for Mitigating Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15310/) (2026)
- [FedLTLib: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Federated Long-Tail Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15625/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) offers a privacy-centric distributed learning framework, enabling model training on individual clients and central aggregation without necessitating data exchange. Nonetheless, FL implementations often suffer from non-i.i.d. and long-tailed class distributions across mobile applications, e.g., autonomous vehicles, which leads models to overfitting as local training may converge to sub-optimal. In our study, we explore the impact of data heterogeneity on model bias and introduce an innovative personalized FL framework, Multi-level Personalized Federated Learning (MuPFL), which leverages the hierarchical architecture of FL to fully harness computational resources at various levels. This framework integrates three pivotal modules: Biased Activation Value Dropout (BAVD) to mitigate overfitting and accelerate training; Adaptive Cluster-based Model Update (ACMU) to refine local models ensuring coherent global aggregation; and Prior Knowledge-assisted Classifier Fine-tuning (PKCF) to bolster classification and personalize models in accord with skewed local data with shared knowledge. Extensive experiments on diverse real-world datasets for image classification and semantic segmentation validate that MuPFL consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, even under extreme non-i.i.d. and long-tail conditions, which enhances accuracy by as much as 7.39% and accelerates training by up to 80% at most, marking significant advancements in both efficiency and effectiveness.