# Harmonizing Generalization and Personalization in Ring-topology Decentralized Federated Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19103 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19103/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08935/) (2019)
- [Tackling the Objective Inconsistency Problem in Heterogeneous Federated Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07481/) (2020)
- [InfoGAN: Interpretable Representation Learning by Information Maximizing Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03657/) (2016)
- [Ditto: Fair and Robust Federated Learning Through Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04221/) (2020)
- [FedBN: Federated Learning on Non-IID Features via Local Batch Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07623/) (2021)
- [Exploiting Shared Representations for Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07078/) (2021)
- [FedProto: Federated Prototype Learning across Heterogeneous Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00243/) (2021)
- [FedBABU: Towards Enhanced Representation for Federated Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06042/) (2021)
- [Decentralized Federated Averaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11375/) (2021)
- [Disentangled Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11695/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Architecture Design for Tackling Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06047/) (2021)
- [DisPFL: Towards Communication-Efficient Personalized Federated Learning via Decentralized Sparse Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00187/) (2022)
- [Decentralized Federated Learning: Balancing Communication and Computing Costs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12048/) (2021)
- [FedFed: Feature Distillation against Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05077/) (2023)
- [FedTGP: Trainable Global Prototypes with Adaptive-Margin-Enhanced Contrastive Learning for Data and Model Heterogeneity in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03230/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Feature Distribution for Loss Functions in Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02988/) (2018)
- [FedCP: Separating Feature Information for Personalized Federated Learning via Conditional Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01217/) (2023)
- [Cross-Silo Prototypical Calibration for Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03457/) (2023)
- [Trading Off Privacy, Utility and Efficiency in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00230/) (2022)
- [Towards Efficient Replay in Federated Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05890/) (2024)
- [Disentangled Federated Learning for Tackling Attributes Skew via Invariant Aggregation and Diversity Transferring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06818/) (2022)
- [Commutative Lie Group VAE for Disentanglement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03375/) (2021)
- [Learngene: From Open-World to Your Learning Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06788/) (2021)
- [Learngene: Inheriting Condensed Knowledge from the Ancestry Model to Descendant Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02279/) (2023)
- [pFedMoE: Data-Level Personalization with Mixture of Experts for Model-Heterogeneous Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01350/) (2024)
- [Unleashing the Power of Continual Learning on Non-Centralized Devices: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13840/) (2024)
- [Personalized Decentralized Federated Learning with Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12156/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce Ring-topology Decentralized Federated Learning (RDFL) for distributed model training, aiming to avoid the inherent risks of centralized failure in server-based FL. However, RDFL faces the challenge of low information-sharing efficiency due to the point-to-point communication manner when handling inherent data heterogeneity. Existing studies to mitigate data heterogeneity focus on personalized optimization of models, ignoring that the lack of shared information constraints can lead to large differences among models, weakening the benefits of collaborative learning. To tackle these challenges, we propose a Divide-and-conquer RDFL framework (DRDFL) that uses a feature generation model to extract personalized information and invariant shared knowledge from the underlying data distribution, ensuring both effective personalization and strong generalization. Specifically, we design a textitPersonaNet module that encourages class-specific feature representations to follow a Gaussian mixture distribution, facilitating the learning of discriminative latent representations tailored to local data distributions. Meanwhile, the textitLearngene module is introduced to encapsulate shared knowledge through an adversarial classifier to align latent representations and extract globally invariant information. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DRDFL outperforms state-of-the-art methods in various data heterogeneity settings.