Assessment Of Data Fusion Systems

With growing emphasis on research and applications in data fusion, it is important to know how to measure fusion system performance. While much of the current research is involved with evaluating fusion systems based on the quality of their outputs, this paper describes the expansion of this scope to include the complexity of the inputs. Since the quality of the outputs is highly dependent on the difficulty of the input scenario, the methodology described in this paper provides us with a more well-rounded interpretation of fusion system performance. Moreover, characterization and quantification of input scenarios allows for the creation and variation of test scenarios, leading to more efficient optimization of fusion systems. A series of complexity and performance metrics were designed according to a common standard to measure the various aspects of the input scenario and the fusion system solution. Finally, these metrics are combined to obtain an assessment index which provides a description of the fusion system performance