# Automatic Structured Pruning for Efficient Architecture in Federated Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01759 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01759/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Going Deeper with Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.4842/) (2014)
- [Learning both Weights and Connections for Efficient Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02626/) (2015)
- [Pruning Filters for Efficient ConvNets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.08710/) (2016)
- [LEAF: A Benchmark for Federated Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01097/) (2018)
- [Learning Efficient Convolutional Networks through Network Slimming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06519/) (2017)
- [Rethinking the Value of Network Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05270/) (2018)
- [FedPara: Low-Rank Hadamard Product for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06098/) (2021)
- [DisPFL: Towards Communication-Efficient Personalized Federated Learning via Decentralized Sparse Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00187/) (2022)
- [Federated Dynamic Sparse Training: Computing Less, Communicating Less, Yet Learning Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09824/) (2021)
- [ZeroFL: Efficient On-Device Training for Federated Learning with Local Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.02507/) (2022)
- [Sparse Random Networks for Communication-Efficient Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15328/) (2022)
- [FedDUAP: Federated Learning with Dynamic Update and Adaptive Pruning Using Shared Data on the Server](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11536/) (2022)
- [Personalized Federated Learning by Structured and Unstructured Pruning under Data Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00562/) (2021)
- [Distributed Pruning Towards Tiny Neural Networks in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01977/) (2022)
- [FedLPS: Heterogeneous Federated Learning for Multiple Tasks with Local Parameter Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08578/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Distributed LLMs and Multimodal Large Language Models: A Survey on Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16585/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In Federated Learning (FL), training is conducted on client devices, typically with limited computational resources and storage capacity. To address these constraints, we propose an automatic pruning scheme tailored for FL systems. Our solution improves computation efficiency on client devices, while minimizing communication costs. One of the challenges of tuning pruning hyper-parameters in FL systems is the restricted access to local data. Thus, we introduce an automatic pruning paradigm that dynamically determines pruning boundaries. Additionally, we utilized a structured pruning algorithm optimized for mobile devices that lack hardware support for sparse computations. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, achieving accuracy comparable to existing methods. Our method notably reduces the number of parameters by 89% and FLOPS by 90%, with minimal impact on the accuracy of the FEMNIST and CelebFaces datasets. Furthermore, our pruning method decreases communication overhead by up to 5x and halves inference time when deployed on Android devices.