BGC: Belief gravitational clustering approach and its application in the counter-deception of belief functions

Counter-deception information fusion is a significant issue in Dempster-Shafer evidence theory (DST). How to effectively counter the deception is the key problem in belief function. Limited work has been presented, of which the negation view, degree of falsity view, and the minimum conflict view are popular ones. However, previous work may suffer from combinatorial explosion or be limited to simple practical application. Based on our previous belief universal gravitation (BUG) model, a simple belief gravitational clustering (BGC) is proposed to model the evidential clustering process. Some goals, like no parameter adjustment, no initial condition, objective and unique cluster number, and robustness are achieved. Furthermore, BGC-based fusion strategy is ulteriorly raised to determine whether the evidence should be fused, which fully considers the abnormal feature of the body of evidence and the nature of the combination rule to perceive the deception. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate the accuracy and flexibility of the proposed work.