Measuring Conflict Functions in Generalized Power Space

One of the most important open issues is that the classical conflict coefficient in D-S evidence theory (DST) cannot correctly determine the conflict degree between two pieces of evidence. This drawback greatly limits the use of DST in real application systems. Early researches mainly focused on the improvement of Dempsterʹs rule of combination (DRC). However, the current research shows it is very important to define new conflict coefficients to determine the conflict degree between two or more pieces of evidence. The evidential sources of information are considered in this work and the definition of a conflict measure function (CMF) is proposed for selecting some useful CMFs in the next fusion work when sources are available at each instant. Firstly, the definition and theorems of CMF are put forward. Secondly, some typical CMFs are extended and then new CMFs are put forward. Finally, experiments illustrate that the CMF based on Jousselme and its similar ones are the best suited ones.