Provable Sparse Inversion and Token Relabel Enhanced One-shot Federated Learning with ViTs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Shen, Li, Hao, Xiaolei, Li, Qinglun, Cao, Xiaochun, Hao, Zhifeng, Yang, Xun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Shen, Li
Hao, Xiaolei
Li, Qinglun
Cao, Xiaochun
Hao, Zhifeng
Yang, Xun
author_facet Shen, Li
Hao, Xiaolei
Li, Qinglun
Cao, Xiaochun
Hao, Zhifeng
Yang, Xun
contents One-Shot Federated Learning, where a central server learns a global model in a single communication round, has emerged as a promising paradigm. However, under extremely non-IID settings, existing data-free methods often generate low-quality data that suffers from severe semantic misalignment with ground-truth labels. To overcome these issues, we propose a novel Federated Model Inversion and Token Relabel (FedMITR) framework, which trains the global model by fully exploiting all patches of synthetic images. Specifically, FedMITR employs sparse model inversion during data generation, selectively inverting semantic foregrounds while halting the inversion of uninformative backgrounds. To address semantically meaningless tokens that hinder ViT predictions, we implement a differentiated strategy: patches with high information density utilize generated pseudo-labels, while patches with low information density are relabeled via ensemble models for robust distillation. Theoretically, our analysis based on algorithmic stability reveals that Sparse Model Inversion eliminates gradient instability arising from background noise, while Token Relabel effectively reduces gradient variance, collectively guaranteeing a tighter generalization bound. Empirically, extensive experimental results demonstrate that FedMITR substantially outperforms existing baselines under various settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_10748
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Provable Sparse Inversion and Token Relabel Enhanced One-shot Federated Learning with ViTs
Shen, Li
Hao, Xiaolei
Li, Qinglun
Cao, Xiaochun
Hao, Zhifeng
Yang, Xun
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
One-Shot Federated Learning, where a central server learns a global model in a single communication round, has emerged as a promising paradigm. However, under extremely non-IID settings, existing data-free methods often generate low-quality data that suffers from severe semantic misalignment with ground-truth labels. To overcome these issues, we propose a novel Federated Model Inversion and Token Relabel (FedMITR) framework, which trains the global model by fully exploiting all patches of synthetic images. Specifically, FedMITR employs sparse model inversion during data generation, selectively inverting semantic foregrounds while halting the inversion of uninformative backgrounds. To address semantically meaningless tokens that hinder ViT predictions, we implement a differentiated strategy: patches with high information density utilize generated pseudo-labels, while patches with low information density are relabeled via ensemble models for robust distillation. Theoretically, our analysis based on algorithmic stability reveals that Sparse Model Inversion eliminates gradient instability arising from background noise, while Token Relabel effectively reduces gradient variance, collectively guaranteeing a tighter generalization bound. Empirically, extensive experimental results demonstrate that FedMITR substantially outperforms existing baselines under various settings.
title Provable Sparse Inversion and Token Relabel Enhanced One-shot Federated Learning with ViTs
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.10748