# subMFL: Compatiple subModel Generation for Federated Learning in Device Heterogenous Environment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20014 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20014/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Fashion-MNIST: a Novel Image Dataset for Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.07747/) (2017)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning: Challenges, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07873/) (2019)
- [Flower: A Friendly Federated Learning Research Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14390/) (2020)
- [Model Pruning Enables Efficient Federated Learning on Edge Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12326/) (2019)
- [FjORD: Fair and Accurate Federated Learning under heterogeneous targets with Ordered Dropout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13451/) (2021)
- [Expanding the Reach of Federated Learning by Reducing Client Resource Requirements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07210/) (2018)
- [Structured Pruning of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.08571/) (2015)
- [Personalized Federated Learning by Structured and Unstructured Pruning under Data Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00562/) (2021)
- [FedPrune: Towards Inclusive Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14205/) (2021)
- [AdaptCL: Efficient Collaborative Learning with Dynamic and Adaptive Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14126/) (2021)
- [On the Convergence of Heterogeneous Federated Learning with Arbitrary Adaptive Online Model Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11803/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated Learning (FL) is commonly used in systems with distributed and heterogeneous devices with access to varying amounts of data and diverse computing and storage capacities. FL training process enables such devices to update the weights of a shared model locally using their local data and then a trusted central server combines all of those models to generate a global model. In this way, a global model is generated while the data remains local to devices to preserve privacy. However, training large models such as Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) on resource-constrained devices can take a prohibitively long time and consume a large amount of energy. In the current process, the low-capacity devices are excluded from the training process, although they might have access to unseen data. To overcome this challenge, we propose a model compression approach that enables heterogeneous devices with varying computing capacities to participate in the FL process. In our approach, the server shares a dense model with all devices to train it: Afterwards, the trained model is gradually compressed to obtain submodels with varying levels of sparsity to be used as suitable initial global models for resource-constrained devices that were not capable of train the first dense model. This results in an increased participation rate of resource-constrained devices while the transferred weights from the previous round of training are preserved. Our validation experiments show that despite reaching about 50 per cent global sparsity, generated submodels maintain their accuracy while can be shared to increase participation by around 50 per cent.