A Fair Federated Learning Method for Handling Client Participation Probability Inconsistencies in Heterogeneous Environments

Siyuan Wu Yongzhe Jia Haolong Xiang Xiaolong Xu Xuyun Zhang Lianyong Qi Wan-Chun Dou

2025 · Neural Information Processing Systems · pp. 166678-166707 · 1 citation · ⚡ 1 influential · 68 references

Computer Science

TL;DR

This work proposes PHP-FL, a novel model-heterogeneous FL method that explicitly addresses scenarios with varying client participation probabilities to enhance both model accuracy and performance fairness, and introduces a Dual-End Aligned ensemble Learning (DEAL) module.

Abstract

Federated learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning paradigm that enables multiple clients to collaboratively train a shared model without exposing their raw data. However, existing FL research has primarily focused on optimizing learning performance based on the assumption of uniform client participation, with few studies delving into performance fairness under inconsistent client participation, particularly in model-heterogeneous FL environments. In view of this challenge, we propose PHP-FL , a novel model-heterogeneous FL method that explicitly addresses scenarios with varying client participation probabilities to enhance both model accuracy and performance fairness. Speciﬁcally, we introduce a Dual-End Aligned ensemble Learning (DEAL) module, where small auxiliary models on clients are used for dual-end knowledge alignment and local ensemble learning, effectively tackling model heterogeneity without a public dataset. Furthermore, to mitigate update conﬂicts caused by inconsistent participation probabilities, we propose an Importance-driven Selective Parameter Update (ISPU) module, which accurately updates critical local parameters based on training progress. Finally, we implement PHP-FL on a lightweight FL platform with heterogeneous clients across three different client participation patterns. Extensive experiments under heterogeneous settings and diverse client participation patterns demonstrate that PHP-FL achieves state-of-the-art performance in both accuracy and fairness. Our code is available at: https://github.com/Siyuan01/PHP-FL-main .

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