DUQFL-Prox is proposed, a drift-stable quantum federated learning framework based on deep-unfolded local optimization that improves stability, generalization, and client fairness compared with standard QFL baselines and is suggested to support more reliable and fair intelligent services in heterogeneous distributed environments.
Abstract
Quantum federated learning enables distributed clients to train quantum neural networks without sharing local data, making it promising for privacy-aware intelligent services. Intelligent services in this context refer to privacy-sensitive distributed decision systems, such as fraud detection and genomic classification, where reliable and fair client-level learning is as important as the accuracy of the aggregate model. However, heterogeneous client data and noisy quantum optimization often cause unstable local updates, client drift, and unfair performance between clients. This paper proposes DUQFL-Prox, a drift-stable quantum federated learning framework based on deep-unfolded local optimization. Instead of using a fixed local optimizer, each client performs adaptive unfolded SPSA updates, while a proximal term keeps the local model close to the global model. A lightweight controller learns step-specific optimization parameters to improve post-aggregation performance. Experiments on financial fraud and genomic classification tasks show that DUQFL-Prox improves stability, generalization, and client fairness compared with standard QFL baselines. The results suggest that deep-unfolded quantum federated learning can support more reliable and fair intelligent services in heterogeneous distributed environments.
KWA is proposed, a hyperparameter-free aggregation strategy that recovers FedAvg under IID conditions, adapts to client drift, and requires no manually tuned hyperparameters.
This study implemented a comprehensive experimental framework for analysing FL performance using standard FL aggregation protocols FedAvg, FedProx, and SCAFFOLD in conjunction with Differential Privacy mechanisms; specifically, the Gaussian noise mechanism with Rényi Differential Privacy (RDP) accountants.
Federated learning is appealing for privacy-sensitive network systems, yet its practical deployment remains hindered by the following three recurring challenges: (1) client drift under non-IID data, (2) vulnerability to corrupted updates, and (3) the communication cost of repeated model exchange. Most existing approaches address these issues in isolation. While analytically convenient, this separation often fails to reflect real-world conditions. For instance, defenses against poisoning may suppress useful updates, while personalization and compression can alter the aggregation geometry itself. In this paper, we study these effects jointly and propose URP-FL, a compact training framework that integrates reliability-aware aggregation, local regularization for drift control, and sparse client uploads. We provide theoretical analysis establishing a convergence bound with distinct terms capturing optimization error, data heterogeneity, and adversarial impact. Experiments on a non-IID image classification benchmark with sign-flip and label-flip attacks demonstrate the benefits of the unified design. Compared to FedAvg and FedProx, this URP-FL maintains accuracy under attack while reducing transmitted parameters by approximately 75%. Rather than presenting a production ready system, it offers a reproducible and technically coherent step toward federated learning that is more robust under realistic conditions.
Hua Kun, Wei Wang· 2026 International Conferenc...· 0 citations
Federated Learning (FL) avoids centralizing raw data, but server-side access to per-client updates still creates a significant privacy risk because gradients can leak sensitive information through inversion and related attacks. A common defense is client-level Differential Privacy (DP), which reduces attack fidelity by perturbing individual updates, but often at the cost of degraded predictive utility, especially in heterogeneous settings. In this paper, we study a different design choice: aggregate-only observability, where the server learns only an aggregate update rather than the individual client contributions that compose it. We develop a unified evaluation framework comparing baseline FL, client-level DP-FL, an idealized sum-only aggregation mechanism (hide_sum), and a quantum-inspired aggregate-observation primitive (qsum) based on finite-shot GHZ-style phase estimation. Experiments on Texas PUDF and MIMIC-IV show that the aggregate-only regimes preserve competitive predictive utility relative to baseline FL while removing the direct per-client observation channel used by standard server-side inversion attacks. We also analyze utility sensitivity to shot budgets and the resource scaling of the quantum-inspired primitive. The results suggest that privacy–utility tradeoffs in FL depend not only on how updates are perturbed, but also on what the server is allowed to observe. Aggregate-only observability therefore provides a useful mechanism-level complement to noise-based privacy defenses, while also motivating hybrid designs to address residual leakage from aggregate updates.
Clifford N. Jones, Md Nahid Hasan, S. Wagle et al.· International Conference on...· 0 citations
Federated learning enables multiple organizations to collaboratively analyze data while retaining local control over their datasets, making it attractive for applications such as healthcare. Distributed quantum computing provides a natural framework for such workflows, allowing geographically separated quantum processors to execute joint computations using shared entanglement while preserving data privacy. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of satellite-enabled distributed quantum computing for federated quantum learning. As a representative application, we consider a distributed distance-based quantum classifier in which multiple parties contribute local data through quantum operations. To support this application, we develop a hybrid space-ground quantum network architecture in which satellites distribute entanglement between distant ground stations. The communication layer is combined with a noise-aware neutral-atom processor model, enabling a system-level analysis that captures both network and hardware constraints. Simulation results across varying network sizes, feature dimensions, and coherence regimes show that classifier performance is jointly determined by communication resources, processor noise, and data representation. In low-coherence regimes, decoherence destroys the classifier’s discriminative signal, whereas high-coherence regimes reveal limitations arising from feature-space conditioning and feature redundancy. These results demonstrate that satellite quantum networks could support distributed quantum learning over long distances, while highlighting the importance of coherence time, entanglement-distribution performance, and learning-aware data encoding for future large-scale deployments.
J. Boschero, Rares Adrian Oancea, L. Mazzarella et al.· Entropy· 0 citations
The fast growth of big data, along with the growing stricter privacy laws, poses tremendous challenges to the traditional centralized implementation of AI models. Federated Learning (FL) offers a decentralized solution; however, it is undermined by a number of performance limitations such as large communicational overhead, statistical heterogeneity due to nonindependent and identically distributed data, and small computational capability of edge clients. This paper presents an optimized AI-based FL architecture, which consolidates a client selection algorithm (that is based on reinforcement-learning) and a dynamic and fairness-conscious aggregation protocol, as well as a new query-fragment caching solution. The combined model is strategically focusing on high utility players, reducing skew in data during model aggregation, and lessening on-device unnecessary processing. The empirical analysis of CIFAR-10 and FEMNIST shows that the presented framework reduces the communication rounds by 38% and the model accuracy is increased by 5.7% when compared with Fed Avg and Fed Prox, at the same time, data privacy is also rigorously maintained.
Shashi Purna Kurapathi· International Conference Com...· 0 citations
