Uncertain linguistic terms with weakened hedges for multi-granular linguistic decision making with its application to evaluating communication technologies

Due to the complex application scenarios and different user requirements, it is usually difficult to evaluate communication technologies objectively and comprehensively. Compared with the traditional quantitative methods, multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) methods based on qualitative analysis can reflect the evaluation opinions of experts more comprehensively. To address the above difficult by utilizing the advantage of the MAGDM based on qualitative analysis, this paper proposes a new linguistic expression model called uncertain linguistic term with weakened hedge (ULTWH), which expresses decision information better and closer to the original terms of experts, and then the model is applied to solve MAGDM problems. An ULTWH is consisted of a linguistic term interval where the real value of a linguistic variable is most likely to appear, and a weakened hedge which is used to express the degree of uncertainty. In the paper, the order relations, operation rules and the aggregation operators for ULTWHs are formulated and presented. Then, a new multi-granular group decision making (GDM) method based on ULTWHs is developed. After that, the developed method is used to solve a specific problem of communication technology evaluation. Finally, a comparative analysis of several multi-granular GDM methods is made. Through comparison, it is shown that the proposed method has a wider range of applications and better interpretability.