Communication Efficient Adaptive Model-Driven Quantum Federated Learning

Training federated learning (FL) at scale suffers from severe communication and heterogeneity constraints. These challenges are amplified in quantum federated learning (QFL), especially under non-IID data. We propose a model-driven QFL (mdQFL) framework that addresses communication overhead, scalability, and client drift through adaptive clustering and representative aggregation. The framework enables structured personalization and efficient update compression across rounds. mdQFL is the first QFL approach to jointly analyze training efficiency, personalization, and test generalization under heterogeneous conditions. Experiments across multiple datasets and quantum platforms show 50% communication reduction while maintaining or improving accuracy over standard QFL baselines. We provide convergence guarantees and communication complexity bounds to establish scalability and robustness.