# FedBKD: Distilled Federated Learning to Embrace Gerneralization and Personalization on Non-IID Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20245 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20245/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [LEAF: A Benchmark for Federated Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01097/) (2018)
- [Ensemble Distillation for Robust Model Fusion in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07242/) (2020)
- [Ditto: Fair and Robust Federated Learning Through Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04221/) (2020)
- [Personalized Federated Learning with Moreau Envelopes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08848/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning with Matched Averaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06440/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning with Personalization Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00818/) (2019)
- [Exploiting Shared Representations for Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07078/) (2021)
- [FedMD: Heterogenous Federated Learning via Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03581/) (2019)
- [Bayesian Nonparametric Federated Learning of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12022/) (2019)
- [Data-Free Knowledge Distillation for Heterogeneous Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10056/) (2021)
- [Adaptive Personalized Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13461/) (2020)
- [Think Locally, Act Globally: Federated Learning with Local and Global Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01523/) (2020)
- [Personalized Cross-Silo Federated Learning on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.03797/) (2020)
- [Federated learning with hierarchical clustering of local updates to improve training on non-IID data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11791/) (2020)
- [Personalized Federated Learning using Hypernetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04628/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning of a Mixture of Global and Local Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05516/) (2020)
- [Data-Free Learning of Student Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01186/) (2019)
- [FedBE: Making Bayesian Model Ensemble Applicable to Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01974/) (2020)
- [Survey of Personalization Techniques for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08673/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning for Open Banking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10749/) (2021)
- [Mode Seeking Generative Adversarial Networks for Diverse Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05628/) (2019)
- [One-Shot Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.11175/) (2019)
- [Towards Fair Federated Learning with Zero-Shot Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13417/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning on Heterogeneous and Long-Tailed Data via Classifier Re-Training with Federated Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13399/) (2022)
- [Adapt to Adaptation: Learning Personalization for Cross-Silo Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08394/) (2021)
- [FedCG: Leverage Conditional GAN for Protecting Privacy and Maintaining Competitive Performance in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08211/) (2021)
- [Personalized Federated Learning With Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00829/) (2022)
- [Personalized Federated Learning by Structured and Unstructured Pruning under Data Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00562/) (2021)

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

- [Secure, Verifiable, and Scalable Multi-Client Data Sharing via Consensus-Based Privacy-Preserving Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00418/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) is a decentralized collaborative machine learning (ML) technique. It provides a solution to the issues of isolated data islands and data privacy leakage in industrial ML practices. One major challenge in FL is handling the non-identical and independent distributed (non-IID) data. Current solutions either focus on constructing an all-powerful global model, or customizing personalized local models. Few of them can provide both a well-generalized global model and well-performed local models at the same time. Additionally, many FL solutions to the non-IID problem are benefited from introducing public datasets. However, this will also increase the risk of data leakage. To tackle the problems, we propose a novel data-free distillation framework, Federated Bidirectional Knowledge Distillation (FedBKD). Specifically, we train Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) for synthetic data. During the GAN training, local models serve as discriminators and their parameters are frozen. The synthetic data is then used for bidirectional distillation between global and local models to achieve knowledge interactions so that performances for both sides are improved. We conduct extensive experiments on 4 benchmarks under different non-IID settings. The results show that FedBKD achieves SOTA performances in every case.