# FedeKD: Energy-Based Gating for Robust Federated Knowledge Distillation under Heterogeneous Settings

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05553 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05553/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Federated, robust and private distillation, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 14 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 May 2026.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [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)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Ensemble Distillation for Robust Model Fusion in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07242/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning Based on Dynamic Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04263/) (2021)
- [FedMD: Heterogenous Federated Learning via Model Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03581/) (2019)
- [FedProto: Federated Prototype Learning across Heterogeneous Clients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00243/) (2021)
- [FedGH: Heterogeneous Federated Learning with Generalized Global Header](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13137/) (2023)
- [Federated Conformal Predictors for Distributed Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17564/) (2023)
- [Towards Personalized Federated Learning via Heterogeneous Model Reassembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08643/) (2023)
- [A comprehensive and easy-to-use multi-domain multi-task medical imaging meta-dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16000/) (2024)
- [Bridging Model Heterogeneity in Federated Learning via Uncertainty-based Asymmetrical Reciprocity Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03247/) (2024)
- [Asymmetrical Reciprocity-based Federated Learning for Resolving Disparities in Medical Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19654/) (2024)
- [Conformalized Neural Networks for Federated Uncertainty Quantification under Dual Heterogeneity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23296/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated learning (FL) operates in heterogeneous environments, where variations in data distributions and asymmetric model design often result in negative transfer. While federated knowledge distillation (FKD) avoids direct model parameter sharing, existing methods typically rely on public datasets or assume that transferred knowledge is uniformly reliable, which limits their robustness in practice. This paper presents FedeKD, a reliability-aware FKD framework that makes sample-wise trust estimation an explicit component of knowledge transfer, without relying on additional public data. Each client maintains a high-capacity private model for local learning and a lightweight shared proxy model for cross-client knowledge exchange. During training, proxy models are aggregated on the server to form a global proxy, which is then used to guide updates of the private models. At the core of FedeKD is an energy-based gating mechanism that converts task-specific private-proxy disagreement into sample-wise trust weights for backward distillation. This mechanism enables sample-wise weighting of knowledge transfer, where the proxy model contributes more to reliable samples while down-weighting unreliable ones. Extensive experiments on six real-world datasets demonstrate that FedeKD significantly reduces negative transfer under heterogeneous settings while maintaining strong predictive performance.