scholarly journals An Improved Data Fusion Method Based on Weighted Belief Entropy considering the Negation of Basic Probability Assignment

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Chen ◽  
Yongchuan Tang ◽  
Yan Lei

Uncertainty in data fusion applications has received great attention. Due to the effectiveness and flexibility in handling uncertainty, Dempster–Shafer evidence theory is widely used in numerous fields of data fusion. However, Dempster–Shafer evidence theory cannot be used directly for conflicting sensor data fusion since counterintuitive results may be attained. In order to handle this issue, a new method for data fusion based on weighted belief entropy and the negation of basic probability assignment (BPA) is proposed. First, the negation of BPA is applied to represent the information in a novel view. Then, by measuring the uncertainty of the evidence, the weighted belief entropy is adopted to indicate the relative importance of evidence. Finally, the ultimate weight of each body of evidence is applied to adjust the mass function before fusing by the Dempster combination rule. The validity of the proposed method is demonstrated in accordance with an experiment on artificial data and an application on fault diagnosis.

Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 820
Author(s):  
Jingyu Liu ◽  
Yongchuan Tang

The multi-agent information fusion (MAIF) system can alleviate the limitations of a single expert system in dealing with complex situations, as it allows multiple agents to cooperate in order to solve problems in complex environments. Dempster–Shafer (D-S) evidence theory has important applications in multi-source data fusion, pattern recognition, and other fields. However, the traditional Dempster combination rules may produce counterintuitive results when dealing with highly conflicting data. A conflict data fusion method in a multi-agent system based on the base basic probability assignment (bBPA) and evidence distance is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the new bBPA and reconstructed BPA are used to construct the initial belief degree of each agent. Then, the information volume of each evidence group is obtained by calculating the evidence distance so as to modify the reliability and obtain more reasonable evidence. Lastly, the final evidence is fused with the Dempster combination rule to obtain the result. Numerical examples show the effectiveness and availability of the proposed method, which improves the accuracy of the identification process of the MAIF system.


Mathematics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 2137
Author(s):  
Dingyi Gan ◽  
Bin Yang ◽  
Yongchuan Tang

The Dempster–Shafer evidence theory has been widely applied in the field of information fusion. However, when the collected evidence data are highly conflicting, the Dempster combination rule (DCR) fails to produce intuitive results most of the time. In order to solve this problem, the base belief function is proposed to modify the basic probability assignment (BPA) in the exhaustive frame of discernment (FOD). However, in the non-exhaustive FOD, the mass function value of the empty set is nonzero, which makes the base belief function no longer applicable. In this paper, considering the influence of the size of the FOD and the mass function value of the empty set, a new belief function named the extended base belief function (EBBF) is proposed. This method can modify the BPA in the non-exhaustive FOD and obtain intuitive fusion results by taking into account the characteristics of the non-exhaustive FOD. In addition, the EBBF can degenerate into the base belief function in the exhaustive FOD. At the same time, by calculating the belief entropy of the modified BPA, we find that the value of belief entropy is higher than before. Belief entropy is used to measure the uncertainty of information, which can show the conflict more intuitively. The increase of the value of entropy belief is the consequence of conflict. This paper also designs an improved conflict data management method based on the EBBF to verify the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed method.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 168781401880918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hepeng Zhang ◽  
Yong Deng

Fault diagnosis is a problem processing variable information obtained from different sources in nature. Evidence theory, efficient to deal with information viewed as evidence, is widely used in fault diagnosis. However, a shortcoming of the existing fault diagnosis methods only gets probability distribution rather than the basic probability assignment. A novel method of generating basic probability assignment that takes information quality into account is proposed. The probability distribution is determined by the preliminary matrix and sampling matrix that are constructed by sensor data. And the quality of probability distribution is taken as the discount factor and the rest of belief is assigned to the universal set. Hence, the basic probability assignment is obtained. Then, basic probability assignment can be combined with Dempster and Shafer evidence theory to determine the status of the engine. An application of engine fault is shown to illustrate the practicability of the proposed method. Then by comparing the result of the method which takes information quality into account (the proposed method) and does not do it, the former is better than the latter. Finally, the reliability analysis shows that the proposed method has strong reliability because performance accuracy is 100% when the error rate is less than 10%.


Author(s):  
Zezheng Yan ◽  
Hanping Zhao ◽  
Xiaowen Mei

AbstractDempster–Shafer evidence theory is widely applied in various fields related to information fusion. However, the results are counterintuitive when highly conflicting evidence is fused with Dempster’s rule of combination. Many improved combination methods have been developed to address conflicting evidence. Nevertheless, all of these approaches have inherent flaws. To solve the existing counterintuitive problem more effectively and less conservatively, an improved combination method for conflicting evidence based on the redistribution of the basic probability assignment is proposed. First, the conflict intensity and the unreliability of the evidence are calculated based on the consistency degree, conflict degree and similarity coefficient among the evidence. Second, the redistribution equation of the basic probability assignment is constructed based on the unreliability and conflict intensity, which realizes the redistribution of the basic probability assignment. Third, to avoid excessive redistribution of the basic probability assignment, the precision degree of the evidence obtained by information entropy is used as the correction factor to modify the basic probability assignment for the second time. Finally, Dempster’s rule of combination is used to fuse the modified basic probability assignment. Several different types of examples and actual data sets are given to illustrate the effectiveness and potential of the proposed method. Furthermore, the comparative analysis reveals the proposed method to be better at obtaining the right results than other related methods.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Yang ◽  
Dingyi Gan ◽  
Yongchuan Tang ◽  
Yan Lei

Quantifying uncertainty is a hot topic for uncertain information processing in the framework of evidence theory, but there is limited research on belief entropy in the open world assumption. In this paper, an uncertainty measurement method that is based on Deng entropy, named Open Deng entropy (ODE), is proposed. In the open world assumption, the frame of discernment (FOD) may be incomplete, and ODE can reasonably and effectively quantify uncertain incomplete information. On the basis of Deng entropy, the ODE adopts the mass value of the empty set, the cardinality of FOD, and the natural constant e to construct a new uncertainty factor for modeling the uncertainty in the FOD. Numerical example shows that, in the closed world assumption, ODE can be degenerated to Deng entropy. An ODE-based information fusion method for sensor data fusion is proposed in uncertain environments. By applying it to the sensor data fusion experiment, the rationality and effectiveness of ODE and its application in uncertain information fusion are verified.


Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Pan ◽  
Deyun Zhou ◽  
Yongchuan Tang ◽  
Xiaoyang Li ◽  
Jichuan Huang

Dempster-Shafer evidence theory (DST) has shown its great advantages to tackle uncertainty in a wide variety of applications. However, how to quantify the information-based uncertainty of basic probability assignment (BPA) with belief entropy in DST framework is still an open issue. The main work of this study is to define a new belief entropy for measuring uncertainty of BPA. The proposed belief entropy has two components. The first component is based on the summation of the probability mass function (PMF) of single events contained in each BPA, which are obtained using plausibility transformation. The second component is the same as the weighted Hartley entropy. The two components could effectively measure the discord uncertainty and non-specificity uncertainty found in DST framework, respectively. The proposed belief entropy is proved to satisfy the majority of the desired properties for an uncertainty measure in DST framework. In addition, when BPA is probability distribution, the proposed method could degrade to Shannon entropy. The feasibility and superiority of the new belief entropy is verified according to the results of numerical experiments.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document