Conference Paper2025Cited by 2

FedCTTA: A Collaborative Approach to Continual Test-Time Adaptation in Federated Learning

Rakibul Hasan Rajib, Md Akil Raihan Iftee, Mir Sazzat Hossain, A. K. M. Mahbubur Rahman, Sajib Mistry, M Ashraful Amin, Amin Ahsan Ali

2025 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)

IEEE, pp. 1–8

DOI: 10.1109/ijcnn64981.2025.11228519URL

Abstract

Federated Learning (FL) enables collaborative model training across distributed clients without sharing raw data, making it ideal for privacy-sensitive applications. However, FL models often suffer performance degradation due to distribution shifts between training and deployment. Test-Time Adaptation (TTA) offers a promising solution by allowing models to adapt using only test samples. However, existing TTA methods in FL face challenges such as computational overhead, privacy risks from feature sharing, and scalability concerns due to memory constraints. To address these limitations, we propose Federated Continual Test-Time Adaptation (FedCTTA), a privacy-preserving and computationally efficient framework for federated adaptation. Unlike prior methods that rely on sharing local feature statistics, FedCTTA avoids direct feature exchange by leveraging similarity-aware aggregation based on model output distributions over randomly generated noise samples. This approach ensures adaptive knowledge sharing while preserving data privacy. Furthermore, FedCTTA minimizes the entropy at each client for continual adaptation, enhancing the model’s confidence in evolving target distributions. Our method eliminates the need for server-side training during adaptation and maintains a constant memory footprint, making it scalable even as the number of clients or training rounds increases. Extensive experiments show that FedCTTA surpasses existing methods across diverse temporal and spatial heterogeneity scenarios.

Keywords

  • Federated learning
  • spatial heterogeneity
  • continual test-time adaptation
  • entropy minimization
  • privacy preservation
  • distribution shift
  • temporal heterogeneity

CCDS Authors

Rakibul Hasan Rajib
Rakibul Hasan Rajib

Rakibul Hasan Rajib

  • Research Assistant, CCDS

Published at

IJCNN, ICIP, Scientific Reports

Research Interests

Computer Vision, Multimodal Learning, Federated Learning

MD Akil Raihan Iftee
Md Akil Raihan Iftee

MD Akil Raihan Iftee

  • Research Assistant, CCDS

Published at

IJCNN, ICIP

Research Interests

Multimodal Learning, Computer Vision, Trustworthy ML

Mir Sazzat Hossain
Mir Sazzat Hossain

Mir Sazzat Hossain

  • Research Assistant, CCDS

Bachelors

Independent University, Bangladesh

Published at

WACV, IJCNN, ICIP, Smart Agricultural Technology

Research Interests

Machine Learning, Computer Vision

Dr. Sajib Mistry
Dr Sajib Mistry

Dr. Sajib Mistry

  • Collaborator, AI/ML Wing

Ph.D Candidate

Curtin University, Australia

Published at

IJCNN

Research Interests

Service Computing, Cloud/Edge Computing, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, Internet of Things

Prof. M Ashraful Amin, PhD
M Ashraful Amin, PhD

Prof. M Ashraful Amin, PhD

  • Founder Director, CCDS
  • Director, AI/ML, HCI & DS Wings

Professor

+1 more affiliation

Department of Information Sciences and Technology

George Mason University, USA

Published at

ACL, CHI, UbiComp, ECAI, WACV, PAKDD, IJCNN, ICPR, ICIP, HCII, CLEF, BLP, Scientific Reports, JMIR, IEEE Access, Smart Agricultural Technology, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, PLOS ONE

Research Interests

Machine Learning, Cognitive & Vision Science, Cybernetics, Surveillance & Security, ICT in Education, Health, & Agriculture, Human-Computer Interaction, Internet of Things, Robotics

Amin Ahsan Ali, PhD
Amin Ahsan Ali, PhD

Amin Ahsan Ali, PhD

  • Director, AI/ML Wing

Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Independent University, Bangladesh

Published at

ACL, CHI, UbiComp, ECCV, IJCAI, ECAI, WACV, IPSN, PAKDD, LREC, IJCNN, ICPR, ICIP, BEA, BLP, ICMLA, Scientific Reports, Scientific Data, Pattern Recognition, Information Sciences, Ad Hoc Networks, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, PLOS ONE

Research Interests

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

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Cited By

  1. 1.Chen Zhang, Ge Su, Huaxiao Zhou, Lu Hao, Fenglin Zhu, Jintai Chen, Yuxiang Cai, Jianwei Yin, Hongxia Xu. (2026). Federated Learning Meets Test-Time Adaptation: Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions. International Journal of Computer Vision, 134(8)[10.1007/s11263-026-02937-6]
  2. 2.Pian Qi, Jingzhi Tu. (2026). FU-TTA: Federated Unlearning for Test-Time Adaptation. International Conference on Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems Engineering (MLISE), 120–127[10.1109/mlise70044.2026.11607543]
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