A new evidence combination method

Considering that the Dempster rule of combination in evidence theory has disadvantages while dealing with highly conflicting evidence, a novel two-level combination method for fusing conflicting evidence is proposed in this paper. Distinguishing between highly conflicting evidence and lowly conflicting evidence, the method adopts the PCR6 rule based on DSmT in the first level of combination to solve high conflict and in the second level uses Dempster rule to keep fast convergence speed and good calculation capability, which can manage conflicting evidence with various degrees effectively and reasonably. The validity of the method proposed is demonstrated by calculation examples.