Sensor dynamic reliability evaluation based on evidence theory and intuitionistic fuzzy sets

This paper presents a new method for sensor dynamic reliability evaluation based on evidence theory and intuitionistic fuzzy sets when the prior knowledge is unknown. The dynamic reliability of sensors is evaluated based on supporting degree between basic probability assignments (BPAs) provided by sensors. First, the concept of asymmetric supporting degree is proposed. By transforming BPAs to intuitionistic fuzzy sets, supporting degree between BPAs is calculated based on intuitionistic fuzzy operations and similarity measure. Then the relationship between dynamic reliability and supporting degree is analyzed. The process of dynamic reliability evaluation is proposed. Finally, the proposed dynamic reliability evaluation is applied to evidence combination. A new evidence combination rule is proposed based on evidence discounting operation and Dempster’s rule. Comparative analysis on the performance of the proposed reliability evaluation method and evidence combination rule is carried out based on numerical examples. The proposed method for data fusion is also applied in target recognition to show its feasibility and validity.