FedAVOT: Exact Distribution Alignment in Federated Learning via Masked Optimal Transport

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Herlock, Rahimi, Kalogerias, Dionysis
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Herlock
Rahimi
Kalogerias, Dionysis
author_facet Herlock
Rahimi
Kalogerias, Dionysis
contents Federated Learning (FL) allows distributed model training without sharing raw data, but suffers when client participation is partial. In practice, the distribution of available users (\emph{availability distribution} $q$) rarely aligns with the distribution defining the optimization objective (\emph{importance distribution} $p$), leading to biased and unstable updates under classical FedAvg. We propose \textbf{Fereated AVerage with Optimal Transport (\textbf{FedAVOT})}, which formulates aggregation as a masked optimal transport problem aligning $q$ and $p$. Using Sinkhorn scaling, \textbf{FedAVOT} computes transport-based aggregation weights with provable convergence guarantees. \textbf{FedAVOT} achieves a standard $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$ rate under a nonsmooth convex FL setting, independent of the number of participating users per round. Our experiments confirm drastically improved performance compared to FedAvg across heterogeneous, fairness-sensitive, and low-availability regimes, even when only two clients participate per round.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_14444
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FedAVOT: Exact Distribution Alignment in Federated Learning via Masked Optimal Transport
Herlock
Rahimi
Kalogerias, Dionysis
Machine Learning
Federated Learning (FL) allows distributed model training without sharing raw data, but suffers when client participation is partial. In practice, the distribution of available users (\emph{availability distribution} $q$) rarely aligns with the distribution defining the optimization objective (\emph{importance distribution} $p$), leading to biased and unstable updates under classical FedAvg. We propose \textbf{Fereated AVerage with Optimal Transport (\textbf{FedAVOT})}, which formulates aggregation as a masked optimal transport problem aligning $q$ and $p$. Using Sinkhorn scaling, \textbf{FedAVOT} computes transport-based aggregation weights with provable convergence guarantees. \textbf{FedAVOT} achieves a standard $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{T})$ rate under a nonsmooth convex FL setting, independent of the number of participating users per round. Our experiments confirm drastically improved performance compared to FedAvg across heterogeneous, fairness-sensitive, and low-availability regimes, even when only two clients participate per round.
title FedAVOT: Exact Distribution Alignment in Federated Learning via Masked Optimal Transport
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14444