Multisensor Data Fusion Based on Modified Belief Entropy in Dempster–Shafer Theory for Smart Environment

Abstract

Multisensor data fusion is extensively used to merge data from heterogeneous sensors in a smart environment. However, sensors provide noisy and uncertain information which is a big challenge for researchers. Since uncertainty in the data is a central constraint for data fusion and decision-making systems. Dempster-Shafer's evidence theory is an appropriate method for modeling and fusing uncertain information. In this paper, a novel data fusion scheme is proposed based on the modified belief entropy of the basic probability assignments (BPAs) to quantify the uncertainty in the information and fused them by Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The proposed DFUDS (data fusion based on measuring uncertainty in Dempster-Shafer) scheme considers the available redundant information in the body of evidence (BoEs). The BoEs obtained from the sensor data are processed by proposed belief entropy, and fuse all pieces of evidence by Dempster's rule of combination to transfer the conflicting data into decision-making results. Extensive computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms in terms of the degree of uncertainty, evidence, reasoning, and decision accuracy under active contexts of the smart environment.

Keywords

• Multisensor data fusion
• Dempster-Shaffer theory
• uncertainty measurements
• belief entropy
• wireless sensor network