Research on the Fusion of Dependent Evidence Based on Rank Correlation Coefficient

Research on dependent evidence combination based on principal component analysis

Dempster-Shafer evidence theory, as a generalization of probability theory, is a powerful tool for dealing with a variety of uncertainties, such as incompleteness, ambiguity, and conflict. Because of its advantages in information fusion compared with traditional probability theory, it is widely used in various fields. However, the classic Dempster's combination rule assumes that evidences are independent of each other, which is difficult to satisfy in real life. Ignoring the dependence among the evidences will lead to unreasonable fusion results, and even wrong conclusions. Considering the limitations of D-S evidence theory, this paper proposed a new evidence fusion model based on principal component analysis (PCA) to deal with the dependence among evidences. First, the approximate independent principal components of each information source were obtained based on principal component analysis. Second, the principal component data set was used as a new information source for evidence theory. Third, the basic belief assignments (BBAs) were constructed. As the fundamental construct of evidence theory, a BBA is a probabilistic function corresponding to each hypothesis, quantifying the belief assigned based on the evidence at hand. This function facilitates the synthesis of disparate evidence sources into a mathematically coherent and unified belief structure. After constructing the BBAs, the BBAs were fused and a conclusion was drawn. The case study verified that the proposed method is more robust than several traditional methods and can deal with redundant information effectively to obtain more stable results.

Time Series Data Fusion Based on Evidence Theory and OWA Operator

Time series data fusion is important in real applications such as target recognition based on sensors' information. The existing credibility decay model (CDM) is not efficient in the situation when the time interval between data from sensors is too long. To address this issue, a new method based on the ordered weighted aggregation operator (OWA) is presented in this paper. With the improvement to use the Q function in the OWA, the effect of time interval on the final fusion result is decreased. The application in target recognition based on time series data fusion illustrates the efficiency of the new method. The proposed method has promising aspects in time series data fusion.