FedTabDiff: Federated Learning of Diffusion Probabilistic Models for
  Synthetic Mixed-Type Tabular Data Generation
Timur Sattarov Marco Schreyer Damian Borth
Realistic synthetic tabular data generation encounters significant challenges
in preserving privacy, especially when dealing with sensitive information in
domains like finance and healthcare. In this paper, we introduce
\textit{Federated Tabular Diffusion} (FedTabDiff) for generating high-fidelity
mixed-type tabular data without centralized access to the original tabular
datasets. Leveraging the strengths of \textit{Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic
Models} (DDPMs), our approach addresses the inherent complexities in tabular
data, such as mixed attribute types and implicit relationships. More
critically, FedTabDiff realizes a decentralized learning scheme that permits
multiple entities to collaboratively train a generative model while respecting
data privacy and locality. We extend DDPMs into the federated setting for
tabular data generation, which includes a synchronous update scheme and
weighted averaging for effective model aggregation. Experimental evaluations on
real-world financial and medical datasets attest to the framework's capability
to produce synthetic data that maintains high fidelity, utility, privacy, and
coverage.