Abstract: In the existing combination methods of conflicting evidence,if the bodies of evidence contain non-singleton evidences,and there is conflict between the bodies of evidence,these combination methods have limitations when using Dempster’s rule in data fusion.In order to solve this problem,an improved combination method of conflicting evidence based on the modified pignistic probability distance was proposed.In the improved method,firstly,the conflict level and the degree of similarity of bodies of evidence are represented by the modified pignistic probability distances among bodies of evidence.Secondly,the weight coefficients are determined according to the support degree among bodies of evidence.Thirdly,the basic probability assignments of the bodies of evidence are revised by weight coefficient based on the thought of the discount rate.And finally,the ultimate combination results are obtained from the revised bodies of evidence by directly applying Dempster’s rule.The analyzed results of numerical examples prove that the proposed new combination method has better applicability and effectiveness compared with the existing methods.

Key words: Evidence theory,Multi-sensor information fusion,Pignistic probability function,Conflict evidence