The combination operation of the conventional Dempster- Shafer algorithm has a tendency to increase exponentially the number of propositions involved in bodies of evidence by creating new ones. The aim of this paper is to explore a 'modified Dempster-Shafer' approach of fusing identity declarations emanating form different sources which include a number of radars, IFF and ESM systems in order to limit the explosion of the number of propositions. We use a non-ad hoc decision rule based on the expected utility interval to select the most probable object in a comprehensive Platform Data Base containing all the possible identity values that a potential target may take. We study the effect of the redistribution of the confidence levels of the eliminated propositions which otherwise overload the real-time data fusion system; these eliminated confidence levels can in particular be assigned to ignorance, or uniformly added to the remaining propositions and to ignorance. A scenario has been selected to demonstrate the performance of our modified Dempster-Shafer method of evidential reasoning.

Date Published: 12 March 1999
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 3719, Sensor Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications III, (12 March 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.341366

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3719:
Sensor Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications III
Belur V. Dasarathy, Editor(s)