Federated variational generative learning for heterogeneous data in distributed environments

Abstract

Distributedly training models across diverse clients with heterogeneous data samples can significantly impact the convergence of federated learning. Various novel federated learning methods address these challenges but often require significant communication resources and local computational capacity, leading to reduced global inference accuracy in scenarios with imbalanced label data distribution and quantity skew. To tackle these challenges, we propose FedVGL, a Federated Variational Generative Learning method that directly trains a local generative model to learn the distribution of local features and improve global target model inference accuracy during aggregation, particularly under conditions of severe data heterogeneity. FedVGL facilitates distributed learning by sharing generators and latent vectors with the global server, aiding in global target model training from mapping local data distribution to the variational latent space for feature reconstruction. Additionally, FedVGL implements anonymization and encryption techniques to bolster privacy during generative model transmission and aggregation. In comparison to vanilla federated learning, FedVGL minimizes communication overhead, demonstrating superior accuracy even with minimal communication rounds. It effectively mitigates model drift in scenarios with heterogeneous data, delivering improved target model training outcomes. Empirical results establish FedVGL's superiority over baseline federated learning methods under severe label imbalance and data skew condition. In a Label-based Dirichlet Distribution setting with α=0.01 and 10 clients using the MNIST dataset, FedVGL achieved an exceptional accuracy over 97% with the VGG-9 target model.