A New Synthesis Combination Rule Based on Evidential Correlation Coefficient

Dempster-Shafer evidence theory has been widely applied to solving data fusion problems. However, it is still an open issue about how to combine the evidences effectively when the high conflict evidences are collected. Many scholars have made improvements to solve this problem, but there are new problems such as violation of the theoretical attributes of D-S combination rules and limitations of application scope of improvement methods. Considering these shortcomings, a new evidence synthesis formula based on correlation coefficient of belief functions is proposed in this paper. Our contribution is that the proposed formula can solve the highly conflict issues mentioned above effectively. Moreover, the various types of evidences collected can be well combined. One of the advantages of the proposed model is that conflict coefficient is the coefficient of the fusion formula which represents the degree of conflict about evidences. So the fusion process is more flexible and useful. Several examples and comparative experimental simulation are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.