The Dempster-Shafer theory is founded on probability theory. The entire machinery of probability theory, and that of measure theory, is at one’s disposal for the understanding and the extension of the Dempster-Shafer theory. It is well known that information theory is also founded on probability theory. Claude Shannon developed, in the 1940’s, the basic concepts of the theory and demonstrated their utility in communications and coding. Shannonian information theory is not, however, the only type of information theory. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, further developments in this field were made by French and Italian mathematicians. They developed information theory axiomatically, and discovered not only the Wiener- Shannon composition law, but also the hyperbolic law and the Inf-law. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the mathematical connections between the Dempster Shafer theory and the various types of information theory. A simple engineering example will be used to demonstrate the utility of the concepts.

Date Published: 23 May 2013
PDF: 22 pages
Proc. SPIE 8745, Signal Processing, Sensor Fusion, and Target Recognition XXII, 87450U (23 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2015930

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8745:
Signal Processing, Sensor Fusion, and Target Recognition XXII
Ivan Kadar, Editor(s)