# FedFQ: Federated Learning with Fine-Grained Quantization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08977 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08977/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning: Strategies for Improving Communication Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05492/) (2016)
- [signSGD: Compressed Optimisation for Non-Convex Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04434/) (2018)
- [Deep Gradient Compression: Reducing the Communication Bandwidth for Distributed Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01887/) (2017)
- [Robust and Communication-Efficient Federated Learning from Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02891/) (2019)
- [FedPAQ: A Communication-Efficient Federated Learning Method with Periodic Averaging and Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13014/) (2019)
- [Client Selection for Federated Learning with Heterogeneous Resources in Mobile Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08333/) (2018)
- [Sparse Communication for Distributed Gradient Descent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05021/) (2017)
- [Qsparse-local-SGD: Distributed SGD with Quantization, Sparsification, and Local Computations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02367/) (2019)
- [Character-Aware Neural Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.06615/) (2015)
- [UVeQFed: Universal Vector Quantization for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03262/) (2020)
- [FedDM: Iterative Distribution Matching for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09653/) (2022)
- [Federated Dynamic Sparse Training: Computing Less, Communicating Less, Yet Learning Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09824/) (2021)
- [Adaptive Gradient Quantization for Data-Parallel SGD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12460/) (2020)
- [Stochastic Client Selection for Federated Learning with Volatile Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08756/) (2020)
- [Convolution-Weight-Distribution Assumption: Rethinking the Criteria of Channel Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11627/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning with Sparsification-Amplified Privacy and Adaptive Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01558/) (2020)
- [CFedAvg: Achieving Efficient Communication and Fast Convergence in Non-IID Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07155/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [FedHQ: Hybrid Runtime Quantization for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11982/) (2025)
- [FedSparQ: Adaptive Sparse Quantization with Error Feedback for Robust & Efficient Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05591/) (2025)
- [FedDRAW: Federated Dual Reputation Annealing Weighting for Heterogeneous Multi-Institutional Chest Radiograph Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.05223/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) is a decentralized approach, enabling multiple participants to collaboratively train a model while ensuring the protection of data privacy. The transmission of updates from numerous edge clusters to the server creates a significant communication bottleneck in FL. Quantization is an effective compression technology, showcasing immense potential in addressing this bottleneck problem. The Non-IID nature of FL renders it sensitive to quantization. Existing quantized FL frameworks inadequately balance high compression ratios and superior convergence performance by roughly employing a uniform quantization bit-width on the client-side. In this work, we propose a communication-efficient FL algorithm with a fine-grained adaptive quantization strategy (FedFQ). FedFQ addresses the trade-off between achieving high communication compression ratios and maintaining superior convergence performance by introducing parameter-level quantization. Specifically, we have designed a Constraint-Guided Simulated Annealing algorithm to determine specific quantization schemes. We derive the convergence of FedFQ, demonstrating its superior convergence performance compared to existing quantized FL algorithms. We conducted extensive experiments on multiple benchmarks and demonstrated that, while maintaining lossless performance, FedFQ achieves a compression ratio of 27 times to 63 times compared to the baseline experiment.