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Belief functions in telecommunications and network technologies: an overview

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Abstract

In the last few years, evidence theory, also known as Dempster-Shafer theory or belief functions theory, have received growing attention in many fields such as artificial intelligence, computer vision, telecommunications and networks, robotics, and finance. This is due to the fact that imperfect information permeates the real-world applications, and as a result, it must be incorporated into any information system that aims to provide a complete and accurate model of the real world. Although, it is in an early stage of development relative to classical probability theory, evidence theory has proved to be particularly useful to represent and reason with imperfect information in a wide range of real-world applications. In such cases, evidence theory provides a flexible framework for handling and mining uncertainty and imprecision as well as combining evidence obtained from multiple sources and modeling the conflict between them. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it introduces the basics of the belief functions theory with emphasis on the transferable belief model. Second, it provides a practical case study to show how the belief functions theory was used in a real network application, thereby providing guidelines for how the evidence theory may be used in telecommunications and networks. Lastly, it surveys and discusses a number of examples of applications of the evidence theory in telecommunications and network technologies.

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Notes

  1. The power set of any set S, written \(\mathcal {P}(S)\) or 2S, is the set of all subsets of S, including the empty set and S itself.

  2. Under closed world assumption m(∅)=0. Under open world assumption, m(∅) may be positive. For the difference between the open and closed world assumptions, see Smets [37].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole Militaire Polytechnique, Algiers, Algeria

    Mustapha Reda Senouci

  2. LiSSi Laboratory, UPEC, Paris, France

    Abdelhamid Mellouk & Mohamed Abdelkrim Senouci

  3. UPE, IFSTTAR-COSYS-GRETTIA, Marne-la-vallée, France

    Latifa Oukhellou

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  1. Mustapha Reda Senouci
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  2. Abdelhamid Mellouk
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  3. Mohamed Abdelkrim Senouci
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  4. Latifa Oukhellou
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Correspondence to Abdelhamid Mellouk.

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Senouci, M.R., Mellouk, A., Senouci, M.A. et al. Belief functions in telecommunications and network technologies: an overview. Ann. Telecommun. 69, 135–145 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-014-0428-5

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