Higher order belief divergence with its application in pattern classification

Abstract

Multi-source information fusion is a sophisticated estimation process that generates a unified profile to assess complex situations. Dempster–Shafer evidence theory (DSET) is a practical theory in handling uncertain information in multi-source information fusion. However, highly-conflicting evidence may cause the combination rule of Dempster to provide counterintuitive results. Thus, how to effectively reconcile highly-conflicting evidence in DSET is still an open issue. To address this problem, in this paper, a novel belief divergence, higher order belief Jensen-Shannon divergence is proposed to measure the discrepancy between BPAs in DSET. The proposed higher order belief Jensen-Shannon divergence is the first method to dynamically measure the discrepancy between BPAs over the time evolution, i.e., to measure the discrepancy between BPAs with different time scale in the future. Besides, the proposed higher order belief Jensen-Shannon divergence has benefits from the perspective of measurement. It satisfies the properties of nonnegativeness and nondegeneracy, symmetry, and the triangle inequality of root form. Based on the proposed higher order belief Jensen-Shannon divergence, a novel multi-source information fusion algorithm is proposed. Eventually, the proposed algorithm is applied to a pattern classification experiment with real-world datasets.