FedDBP: Enhancing Federated Prototype Learning with Dual-Branch Features and Personalized Global Fusion

arXiv cs.CV / 4/1/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper introduces FedDBP, a federated prototype learning method aimed at handling heterogeneous federated learning by addressing feature fidelity/discriminability and the limitations of using a single global prototype.
  • On the client side, FedDBP proposes a Dual-Branch feature projector that uses both L2 alignment and contrastive learning to preserve local feature quality while improving class separability.
  • On the server side, it adds Personalized global prototype fusion, using Fisher information to select or weight the most important channels from local prototypes.
  • Experiments reported in the paper show FedDBP outperforms ten existing advanced federated prototype learning methods.

Abstract

Federated prototype learning (FPL), as a solution to heterogeneous federated learning (HFL), effectively alleviates the challenges of data and model heterogeneity.However, existing FPL methods fail to balance the fidelity and discriminability of the feature, and are limited by a single global prototype. In this paper, we propose FedDBP, a novel FPL method to address the above issues. On the client-side, we design a Dual-Branch feature projector that employs L2 alignment and contrastive learning simultaneously, thereby ensuring both the fidelity and discriminability of local features. On the server-side, we introduce a Personalized global prototype fusion approach that leverages Fisher information to identify the important channels of local prototypes. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of FedDBP over ten existing advanced methods.

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