# Towards Personalized Federated Learning via Comprehensive Knowledge Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.03569 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03569/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Federated, robust and private distillation, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 11 of its 15 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Nov 2024.

## Placed in

- Knowledge distillation / [Federated, robust and private distillation](https://mlsanity.com/distill/federated-robust-and-private-distillation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [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)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Personalized Federated Learning with Moreau Envelopes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08848/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning with Personalization Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00818/) (2019)
- [Think Locally, Act Globally: Federated Learning with Local and Global Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01523/) (2020)
- [Personalized Federated Learning with First Order Model Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08565/) (2020)
- [pFedMoE: Data-Level Personalization with Mixture of Experts for Model-Heterogeneous Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01350/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Distillation in Federated Learning: a Survey on Long Lasting Challenges and New Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10861/) (2024)
- [Starlit: Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning to Enhance Financial Fraud Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10765/) (2024)

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

- [Federated Online Learning for Heterogeneous Multisource Streaming Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06652/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning is a distributed machine learning paradigm designed to protect data privacy. However, data heterogeneity across various clients results in catastrophic forgetting, where the model rapidly forgets previous knowledge while acquiring new knowledge. To address this challenge, personalized federated learning has emerged to customize a personalized model for each client. However, the inherent limitation of this mechanism is its excessive focus on personalization, potentially hindering the generalization of those models. In this paper, we present a novel personalized federated learning method that uses global and historical models as teachers and the local model as the student to facilitate comprehensive knowledge distillation. The historical model represents the local model from the last round of client training, containing historical personalized knowledge, while the global model represents the aggregated model from the last round of server aggregation, containing global generalized knowledge. By applying knowledge distillation, we effectively transfer global generalized knowledge and historical personalized knowledge to the local model, thus mitigating catastrophic forgetting and enhancing the general performance of personalized models. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the significant advantages of our method.