# Communication-efficient Federated Graph Classification via Generative Diffusion Modeling

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15722 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15722/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 51 of its 92 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Robustness, privacy and adversarial aspects](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/robustness-privacy-and-adversarial-aspects/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03006/) (2021)
- [Graph Neural Networks: A Review of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08434/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning: Strategies for Improving Communication Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05492/) (2016)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [Hierarchical Graph Representation Learning with Differentiable Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08804/) (2018)
- [Model-Contrastive Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16257/) (2021)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Social Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07243/) (2019)
- [Exploiting Unintended Feature Leakage in Collaborative Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04049/) (2018)
- [DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14734/) (2022)
- [Simple diffusion: End-to-end diffusion for high resolution images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11093/) (2023)
- [Robust and Communication-Efficient Federated Learning from Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02891/) (2019)
- [iDLG: Improved Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02610/) (2020)
- [Deep Models Under the GAN: Information Leakage from Collaborative Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07464/) (2017)
- [Graph Neural Networks with Learnable Structural and Positional Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07875/) (2021)
- [FedML: A Research Library and Benchmark for Federated Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13518/) (2020)
- [Score-based Generative Modeling of Graphs via the System of Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02514/) (2022)
- [Permutation Invariant Graph Generation via Score-Based Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00638/) (2020)
- [Beyond Inferring Class Representatives: User-Level Privacy Leakage From Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00535/) (2018)
- [Client Selection in Federated Learning: Convergence Analysis and Power-of-Choice Selection Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01243/) (2020)
- [FedDC: Federated Learning with Non-IID Data via Local Drift Decoupling and Correction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11751/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) unlock new ways of learning from graph-structured data, proving highly effective in capturing complex relationships and patterns. Federated GNNs (FGNNs) have emerged as a prominent distributed learning paradigm for training GNNs over decentralized data. However, FGNNs face two significant challenges: high communication overhead from multiple rounds of parameter exchanges and non-IID data characteristics across clients. To address these issues, we introduce CeFGC, a novel FGNN paradigm that facilitates efficient GNN training over non-IID data by limiting communication between the server and clients to three rounds only. The core idea of CeFGC is to leverage generative diffusion models to minimize direct client-server communication. Each client trains a generative diffusion model that captures its local graph distribution and shares this model with the server, which then redistributes it back to all clients. Using these generative models, clients generate synthetic graphs combined with their local graphs to train local GNN models. Finally, clients upload their model weights to the server for aggregation into a global GNN model. We theoretically analyze the I/O complexity of communication volume to show that CeFGC reduces to a constant of three communication rounds only. Extensive experiments on several real graph datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of CeFGC against state-of-the-art competitors, reflecting our superior performance on non-IID graphs by aligning local and global model objectives and enriching the training set with diverse graphs.