An Improved Method to Manage Conflict Data Using Elementary Belief Assignment Function in the Evidence Theory

Abstract

Dempster-Shafer evidence theory plays an important role in many applications such as multi-sensor data fusion and pattern recognition. However, if there are conflicts among evidences, the results of data fusion using Dempster combination rule may lead to counter-intuitive results. In this paper, we propose a new method named elementary belief assignment function for conflict data fusion. The proposed method aims at getting a more rational data fusion result by preprocessing the mass function before implementing data fusion with Dempster's combination rule. The elementary belief assignment function takes into consideration not only the number of focal elements in the current body of evidence but also the proposition in the power set space. By assigning the mass value of potential conflict focal element to other related propositions in the power set space, we can reduce the conflict level among different bodies of evidences effectively. We verify the rationality and efficiency of the proposed method according to several experiment examples. INDEX TERMS Dempster-Shafer evidence theory, conflict management, conflict data fusion, basic belief assignment, elementary belief assignment function.

Improved Base Belief Function-Based Conflict Data Fusion Approach Considering Belief Entropy in the Evidence Theory

“…The improved base belief function is proposed to obtain the modified BPAs before data fusion in [ 45 ]. Let be a set of N possible values which are mutually exclusive.…”

“…Determine the number of propositions with initial belief degree assigned in evidence group as . Thus, the improved base belief function is defined as [ 45 ]: where represents a subset in FOD . represents the number of propositions with initial belief degree in evidence group.…”

“… represents the number of propositions with initial belief degree in evidence group. Then is adopted to modify the initial BPA m through the arithmetic mean [ 45 ]: …”

“…In [ 44 ], base belief function is proposed, which can modify the BPAs to deal with conflict data fusion. Based on this, in [ 45 ], an improved method is proposed to manage conflict data by assigning an elementary belief. On the basis of the conflict data fusion strategy, the improved base belief function [ 45 ] and belief entropy [ 39 ] are used to solve the problem of conflict data fusion.…”

An Improved Total Uncertainty Measure in the Evidence Theory and Its Application in Decision Making

“…Many theories have been proposed to address the problem such as fuzzy set theory [ 4 ], probability theory [ 5 ], Dempster–Shafer evidence theory (DS theory) [ 6 , 7 ], etc. First proposed by Arthur Dempster and Glenn Shafer, Dempster–Shafer theory has been widely used in many fields such as risk evaluation [ 8 , 9 , 10 ], sensor data fusion [ 11 ], decision making [ 12 , 13 ], image recognition [ 14 ], classification [ 15 , 16 ], clustering [ 17 , 18 ] and so on [ 19 , 20 ]. However, some open issues remain unresolved.…”