Reliable sources and uncertain decisions in multisensor systems

Conflict among information sources is a feature of fused multisource and multisensor systems. Accordingly, the subject of conflict resolution has a long history in the literature of data fusion algorithms such as that of Dempster-Shafer theory (DS). Most conflict resolution strategies focus on distributing the conflict among the elements of the frame of discernment (the set of hypotheses that describe the possible decisions for which evidence is obtained) through rescaling of the evidence. These “closed-world” strategies imply that conflict is due to the uncertainty in evidence sources stemming from their reliability. An alternative approach is the “open-world” hypothesis, which allows for the presence of "unknown" elements not included in the original frame of discernment. Here, conflict must be considered as a result of uncertainty in the frame of the discernment, rather than solely the province of evidence sources. Uncertainty in the operating environment of a fused system is likely to appear as an open-world scenario. Understanding the origin of conflict (source versus frame of discernment uncertainty) is a challenging area for research in fused systems. Determining the ratio of these uncertainties provides useful insights into the operation of fused systems and confidence in their decisions for a variety of operating environments. Results and discussion for the computation of these uncertainties are presented for several combination rules with simulated data sets.