# FedX: Adaptive Model Decomposition and Quantization for IoT Federated Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12849 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12849/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [On the Convergence of FedAvg on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02189/) (2019)
- [LEAF: A Benchmark for Federated Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01097/) (2018)
- [Once-for-All: Train One Network and Specialize it for Efficient Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09791/) (2019)
- [FedMD: Heterogenous Federated Learning via Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03581/) (2019)
- [Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10056/) (2021)
- [FedKD: Communication Efficient Federated Learning via Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.13323/) (2021)
- [TiFL: A Tier-based Federated Learning System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09249/) (2020)
- [Client Selection in Federated Learning: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01549/) (2022)
- [DAdaQuant: Doubly-adaptive quantization for communication-efficient Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00465/) (2021)
- [Accuracy vs. Efficiency: Achieving Both through FPGA-Implementation Aware Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.11211/) (2019)
- [MetaFed: Federated Learning among Federations with Cyclic Knowledge Distillation for Personalized Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08516/) (2022)
- [Faster Adaptive Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00974/) (2022)
- [CompOFA: Compound Once-For-All Networks for Faster Multi-Platform Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12642/) (2021)
- [Privacy and Efficiency of Communications in Federated Split Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01824/) (2023)
- [Communication-Efficient Federated Learning for Heterogeneous Edge Devices Based on Adaptive Gradient Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08272/) (2022)
- [Complement Sparsification: Low-Overhead Model Pruning for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06237/) (2023)
- [A Closer Look at Codistillation for Distributed Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02838/) (2020)
- [Speed Up Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Environment: A Dynamic Tiering Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.05642/) (2023)
- [Model Segmentation for Storage Efficient Private Federated Learning with Top r Sparsification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11947/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated Learning (FL) allows collaborative training among multiple devices without data sharing, thus enabling privacy-sensitive applications on mobile or Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as mobile health and asset tracking. However, designing an FL system with good model utility that works with low computation/communication overhead on heterogeneous, resource-constrained mobile/IoT devices is challenging. To address this problem, this paper proposes FedX, a novel adaptive model decomposition and quantization FL system for IoT. To balance utility with resource constraints on IoT devices, FedX decomposes a global FL model into different sub-networks with adaptive numbers of quantized bits for different devices. The key idea is that a device with fewer resources receives a smaller sub-network for lower overhead but utilizes a larger number of quantized bits for higher model utility, and vice versa. The quantization operations in FedX are done at the server to reduce the computational load on devices. FedX iteratively minimizes the losses in the devices' local data and in the server's public data using quantized sub-networks under a regularization term, and thus it maximizes the benefits of combining FL with model quantization through knowledge sharing among the server and devices in a cost-effective training process. Extensive experiments show that FedX significantly improves quantization times by up to 8.43X, on-device computation time by 1.5X, and total end-to-end training time by 1.36X, compared with baseline FL systems. We guarantee the global model convergence theoretically and validate local model convergence empirically, highlighting FedX's optimization efficiency.