Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34

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Computers in Industry
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compind

Multi-sensor data fusion by a hybrid methodology – A comparative

study
Sarvesh Rawat a,*, Surabhi Rawat b
a
School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (SELECT), VIT University, Vellore 632014, India
b
School of Biotechnology & Biosciences, Lovely Faculty of Technology & Sciences, Punjab, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Multi-sensor data fusion is considered as an inherent problem in wireless sensor network applications. It
Received 4 May 2015 is widely assumed as a sturdy non linear system in view of the complexities involved in its operation. An
Received in revised form 14 October 2015 accurate and precise methodical solution is therefore a complicated task to accomplish. It is crucial for
Accepted 29 October 2015
the sensory systems that they should not be influenced in terms of accuracy and precision by any means.
Available online 13 November 2015
To address these issues a hybrid model employing rough set (RS) with back-propagation neural network
(BPNN) is used to ameliorate the data fusion capability of the system with an illustrative example.
Keywords:
Experimental results have demonstrated an escalating improvement in the predictive accuracy of the
Multi-sensor data fusion
hybrid model as compared to the traditional BPNN model.
Hybrid architecture
Neural network ß 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Diagnostic tool
Rough-sets

1. Introduction
A multi-sensor system sustains to several abrupt anomalies like
electronic disturbances and thermal changes which changes the
state of the system [1]. Therefore, a framework should be primed
that guarantees a stable and smooth function under the influence
of unreliable external or unknown influences. Systems employing
multi sensors for their functions gain more informative knowledge
than the one using single sensor system [2]. Complex systems used
in missile tracking, live targets tracking, employs various kinds of
sensors for acquiring high accuracy, improved reliability and
robustness of the system [6]. Therefore, an inconceivable stress is
put upon investigating the calculations focusing on multi-sensory
data combinations [3]. These systems have become extremely vital
these days owing to their high accuracy and large parameter
strengths. There are several issues involved in a sensory network
that make data fusion a complicated task. The real world data
fusion application tackles with several data related challenges that
are shown in Fig. 1. The input data to a multisensory fusion system
is inconsistent, imperfect, correlated and/or in disparate forms.
Each of these can be subcategorized further into distinctive subsets
and discussed in the following section.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: sss.sarvesh888@gmail.com (S. Rawat),
surabhirawat40@gmail.com (S. Rawat).
The greater part of the information related issues emerge from
the restrictions existing in the sensor technologies and unpro-
cessed raw data that can be categorized as follows.
Data imperfection: It exists when data provided by sensors is
influenced by some degree of uncertainty in the measurement
system or due to impreciseness present in the data. An
imperfection in the data can be caused due to the ambiguity
present in sensory data or due to false information value.
Additionally, sometimes this imperfection also exists due to
incomplete/missing information. A data fusion algorithm should
express such imperfections present in the data and viably reduce
them.
Inconsistent data and data correlation: There are several causes
for a dataset to be inconsistent. When a system is encountered
with outlier/spurious data or encountered by disordered or
conflicting data that are primarily caused by inconsistencies and
ambiguities present in the environment, it fails to distinguish
between the real data and the associated ambiguities with it. The
Sensory Data fusion algorithm should exploit the redundant data
to alleviate such effects. Data correlation is often experienced in
distributed data fusion setting. For example, a WSN has several
nodes that are exposed to the same external noise, hence biasing
the measurements. These data dependencies must be accounted
for the exact operation of the system, in order to refrain them
suffering from over/under confidence in the effect.
Disparateness: It alludes to the integration of the two or more
disparate sources, that helps in overcoming some of the limitations

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2015.10.012
0166-3615/ß 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
[(Fig._1)TD$IG]
28 S. Rawat, S. Rawat / Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34
Fig. 1. Taxonomy of inaccuracies present in the multisensory data fusion system.
of the single source based system. While, on the other hand, a
multi-sensor system comprises of different data domains which
add another challenge for the data fusion [26]. For example, a
typical sensory system consists of temp sensor, pressure sensor
and moisture sensor. Likewise, in the same manner, some sensors
deal with the chemical and physical nature of the material. Each
sensor has its own signature and has its own classification and
description. It becomes very hard for the system’s operator to
assimilate the data and mine effective rules from it [27].
The traditional sensor fusion methodologies are highly impre-
cise, uncertain and inaccurate since the unverifiable parameters
and obscure attributes lead to a large error and complications
[5,6]. The outside disturbances and uncertainty factors are very
complex and non linear in nature. To analyze the whole incoming
sensory data, identify the state of the system and effectively mine
results from it become a difficult task for the system’s operator.
Hence, there is a huge demand for developing new sensor systems
which can partition the error gap. To redress these raised issues
several hybrid methodologies are employed such as fuzzy logic,
artificial neural network, neuro-fuzzy and rough sets [11,12,16]. To
identify the state of the system using the training data is a primary
reason of using machine learning and soft computing techniques.
The aim of this work is to propose an effective and proficient
architecture capable of delivering a high predictive accuracy. To
meet the objectives, a hybrid architecture employing RS–BPNN is
employed in this work to enhance the reliability and capability of
the multi sensor fusion system. The proposed methodology is
tested in a water pollution monitoring system. It utilizes the data,
taken from the monitoring system, to train and test the proposed
hybrid network. RS preprocess and mine the incoming data
receiving from the sensors. It identifies the crucial features and
removes the superfluous information from the database. The
important features are fed to the NN classifier and trained with BP
algorithm to predict the pollution level of the area.
The rest of the paper is arranged as follows. Section 2 discusses
about the water pollution monitoring system. Section 3 discusses
about the work done by the various researchers and the prevailed
problems of this field. Sections 4 and 5 consist of the basics of RST
and NN, while Section 6 shows the experiment and the results.
Finally, the conclusion of the work along with discussion is
presented in Section 7.
2. Water pollution monitoring system
Water pollution is considered as one of the most critical
problems of the modern world [25]. Rapid industrialization has led
to a surplus increment in the quantity of toxins and wastes in the
water. Now a day, monitoring the water pollution level in water
sources has become a challenging task [25]. In our example, a
multisensory system containing four sensors (sensor 1, sensor 2,
sensor 3 and sensor 4) is used to monitor the Biochemical Oxygen
Demand (BOD) in the water area. The other four sensors (sensor 5,
sensor 6, sensor 7 and sensor 8) monitor the Chemical Oxygen
Demand (COD) of the water. The way of installation of the sensor
net also affects the final fusion result that is represented as sensor
9. Another sensor denoted as sensor 10 that describes the status of
the sewage disposal machine stating if it is running or not. Fig. 2
shows the input data aggregated from the sensors.
The output value that determines the status of water pollution
level is shown in Fig. 3. The range of output values lies between
3 and 4.
The system operator analyzes all the incoming data collected
from different sensors to estimate the status of the pollution level
in the water. The data samples consist of multiple domains of
values that make it a typical data fusion problem. There is an acute
need of devising a precise and detailed mathematical model which
can model the whole system. To resolve this problem, a hybrid
method is proposed in this work that integrates data fusion and
data mining together to produce effective rules for the system’s
operator.
3. Literature review
There are several issues associated with data fusion methodol-
ogies making it a challenging task for the system’s operator as well
as researchers. The majority of these issues emerged from the
unprocessed imperfect data that is highly uncertain and vague in
nature as discussed in previous sections. It is quite troublesome
task for the system’s operator to process the data from disparate
sources and mine useful results. Various researchers have done a
significant work to deal with the issues associated with the multi-
sensor data fusion system.
Few researchers utilized a probabilistic approach with Bayesian
network in their work to deal with the data fusion problem
[19,21].This approach relies on the probabilistic density function to
express the uncertainty present in the data. Although it is a
traditional approach to treat the data filled with uncertainty but it
is incapable of addressing the other imperfection aspects of the
data, such as dealing with the missing data samples or data
correlation [20]. Few other researchers used fuzzy reasoning
technique to process the vague data and generate the decision
rules for the system’s operator [11]. An integrated system
employing fuzzy with data fusion was employed to minimize
the failure risk in an integrated vehicle systems [4,7]. The major
limitation while using fuzzy based system lies in the fact that they
are limited merely to the fusion of the vague data [15]. An
[(Fig._2)TD$IG] S. Rawat, S. Rawat / Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34
sensor1
sensor 6
2.5
Sensor values
1.5
0.5
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
Fig. 2. Input features showing the status of different sensors.
[(Fig._3)TD$IG]
6
4
2
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49
evidential approach to solve the problem with relying on the
probability measure to categorize the data was proposed in [21]. It
enables the fusion of ambiguous and uncertain data, but does not
deal with the other aspects of the data imprecision. Hence it
renders ineffective for the fusion of highly conflicting data [28]. Set
approximation based techniques employing RS was also used in
processing the multisensory data [12,13]. The major associated
advantage with RS is it does not require any prior or additional
information about the database. Yet at the same time it obliges a
fitting level of the data granularity which makes it less productive
[28]. Few researchers used sensor validation techniques and
stochastic adaptive sensor modeling techniques that provide a
basic structure for the detection of the bogus data without having
prior knowledge [22]. However, this model had an exceptionally
constrained extension as it was confined to a couple of
fundamental and particular prior known failure models [16,18].
Another significant work using correlated data fusion methods by
implying covariance intersection was proposed in [26]. Although it
provides an enhanced efficiency, yet it offers tighter covariance
estimation and has a limited scope in the real time world system.
As the system is becoming more complex, the data fusion
methodologies have stumbled upon various new challenges
[17]. The system’s operator has to deal with a lot of uncertainties
vagueness and imperfections in the data. It turns into an entangled
errand for the operator to mine the effective rules and estimating
the state of the system. Furthermore, in some data fusion methods,
a system operator must have some prior information, such as
statistical characteristic or probabilistic measures about the
sensing object so that an efficient decision can be made [23,24].
Current sensor fusion technologies and methods are inefficient
rendering a large error gap persists in the system. Consequently, to
avoid the complicated systematic approach, several delicate and
more compelling techniques utilizing soft computing are often
used today. The foremost idea behind using a soft computing
system is to assimilate the training data and utilize it for the
29
sensor 2 sensor 3 sensor 4 sensor 5
sensor 7 sensor 8 sensor 9 sensor 10
Total Samples
Output
Fig. 3. Output decisive attribute.
system identification and prediction. In this work, a hybrid model
is proposed that provides a more comprehensive treatment to the
inconsistent, uncertain and, imperfect data. An offline hybrid
classifier involving RS alongside BPNN is used to process the
incoming data and identify the state of the system. It is a two step
process. In the first step, RS is used as a set theoretic approach that
effectively deals with the impreciseness, uncertainty and ambi-
guity present in the data. Using the notions of upper and lower
approximations it finds the crucial features of the dataset. These
features are fed to the NN that is trained using BP algorithm and the
prediction value of the decision is made.
4. Rough sets
RST is used as a tool to discover the ambiguity from a sample
data set and remove the redundant information [12,13]. It provides
a proficient algorithm to discover hidden patterns from the given
dataset. It is profoundly used in the reduction of ineffectual data
from a large database. It assesses the significance present in the
data set and finds a possible set of data that can be employed for
training the system [13,14]. A given information table can be
represented as I = (U, A [ D, V, f). Here U represents a non empty
finite set; A [ D denotes the total attributes where A is the total
number of condition attributes and D is the decision attribute. It
should be noted that A \ D = f. Now, the function f is a denoted as
f : U  a ! Va, in a way f(y, a) 2 Va. Here, y 2 U and a 2 A. Va 2 V is a
domain of the attribute a 2 A. In common the entire information
system is represented as I = (U, A).
The basic concept of RS includes the following terms.
4.1. Indiscernibility
A binary relation P  X  X, for an object x is called as an
equivalence relation if it is reflexive, follows xRx, symmetric (xPy
then yPx) and transitive (yPx and yPz then xPz). A fundamental
30 S. Rawat, S. Rawat / Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34

relation that holds this property is termed as indiscernibility
relation. For an information system I and P  A, the indiscernibility
relation is given as IND(P) = {(x, z) 2 U2j 8 p 2 P, f(x, p) = a(z, p)}.
In a way such that (x, z) 2 IND(P), x and z are called as
step involves the calculation of error signal using the equation
ej ¼ ðpj oj Þf ðnj Þ. The derivative of this function is given as f ðnj Þ ¼
¯
1
1þexpðnj Þ and f¯ðnj Þ ¼ oj ð1oj Þ, where j = 1, 2, . . ., no. The value of

P-indiscernible. The efficacy of this relation is to divide the error signal in hidden neuron depends on the output neuron error
P
universe into several equivalence classes given as U/IND(P). that is given by the equation ek ¼ no j¼1 ðej wkj Þf¯ðnk Þ, where k = 1, 2,
. . ., nh and f ðnk Þ ¼ sk ð1sk Þ.
¯
4.2. Approximations Now, BP algorithm is used to adjust the weights between the
output layer and the hidden layer that is given by
Let us assume the approximate space as (U, P), where U signifies P
Dwkj ¼ ho ej sk . The error function E is given by E ¼ 12 no j¼1 ðpj oj Þ
2

the universe of objects. Let X is an element that belongs to U in a

and oj = f(nj). Putting these values in the original equation and
way that X 2 U, here U = (x1, x2, x3, . . .. . .) and P  U  U represents
further solving, we get Dwkj ¼ ho ej sk . The adjustment equations
an indiscernibility relation. Here, P denotes an equivalence
ðtþ1Þ ðtÞ ðtþ1Þ ðt Þ ðtþ1Þ
relation, and [x]P represents an equivalence class of an element are given a Dwkj ¼ hej sk þ aDwkj and wkj ¼ wkj þ Dwkj .
x 2 U with indiscernibility relation P. Hence, we can define two Here, j = 1, 2, . . ., no, k = 1, 2, . . ., ns, a is momentum rate and
subsets that as DwðkjtÞ represents the difference between the prior weight the
current weight.
 Upper approximations that are denoted by ðPXÞ and it can be
¯ Next step involves adjusting the weights between input layer
represented as P X ¼ fxj½x \ X 6¼ ;g. It contains all the subsets
¯ and the hidden layer that is given by Dvik ¼ ho  @@VE . Here E is the
ðP X ¼ PX þ BP ðXÞÞ which possibly belong to the set. ik
¯ same error function. On further solving we get
 Lower approximations that are denoted by ð PXÞ represented by P
PX ¼ fxj½x  Xg. It contains subsets those are certainly/definite- Dvik ¼ ho ek bi . Here, ek ¼ noj¼1 ðej wkj Þsk ð1sk Þ. The adjustment
ly belongs to the set. equation is given as vik
ðtþ1Þ ðt Þ
¼ vik þ Dvik
ðtþ1Þ
and Dvik
ðtþ1Þ
¼ ho ek bi þ
 Boundary approximations that are denoted by BP(X). It is the ðtÞ ðtÞ
difference between upper and lower approximation that denoted
aDv where Dv represents the difference between the prior
ik
, ik

by BP ðXÞ ¼ ðP X PXÞ. It neither belongs to Xa nor (U  X) and
¯ a is the momentum rate.
contains the uncertain regions of the data sets.
4.3. Core and reducts
The concept of core and reduct is to filter out the unnecessary
information from the system. Reducts are the attribute, R  A such
that IN(R) = IN(A). Here IN(R) and IN(A), both represents an
indiscernibility relation. The intersection of all reducts is called
as ‘‘CORE’’. Mathematically, it can be expressed as COR-
E(R) = \ Red(R). Here reduct is represented as Red(R). Core is an
important feature of the information system and is common for all
reducts.
Let IS = (U, A) represents an information system with m objects.
The discernibility matrix of IS will contain m  m elements. Let the
universe U = x1, x2, x3, . . ., xn and the matrix will be defined as S = sij,
is a jUj  jUj matrix in which the elements sij for an objects pair of
(xi, U/D) is obtained by sij = {a 2 C : a(xi) 6¼ a(xj) ^ (d 2 D),
d(xi) 6¼ d(xj)), i, j = 1, 2 . . . n.
Here sij is the set of attributes which classifies objects xi and xj
into different decision class labels using the partition of U/D. The
physical meaning of the element sij is the objects xi and xj which can
be distinguished by any attribute in sij. The discernibility matrix
‘‘S’’ is a symmetric matrix that follows sij = sji.
weight and the current weight, k = 1, 2, . . ., nh and i = 1, 2, . . ., ns and
After the network is trained, the MSE function is calculated that
P P I 2
is given by Error ¼ 12 Ii¼1 no I
j¼1 ðpj oj Þ and termination conditions
are verified. If condition fails the whole process is started again.
Fig. 4 shows the flowchart of BPNN for training the network and
forecasting the output values.
6. Experiment and results
The first and primary step involves the preprocessing of the
sensory data. It incorporates normalization and refining of the
dataset. The next step includes the utilization of RST for identifying
the crucial features from the dataset. The pertinent elements are
then nourished to the NN that is further trained by the LM-BP
algorithm.
6.1. Step 1. Data preprocessing
The primary step involves processing of the data. It seeks to
refine the irrelevant and superfluous elements from the data. It
usually employs several methodologies such as feature extraction,
normalization, selection and transformation of the features. In our
case we have discretize the entire dataset to a single numeric value
to make the work easier.

6.2. Step 2. Feature reduction using RST

5. Back propagation neural network

6.2.1. (i) Approximations

Back-propagation algorithm is primarily employed to train the
neural network. It calculates the minimum error function of
the network [8]. The initial weights are chosen randomly for the
initialization of the network [9,10]. The gradient of the error function
is used to correct the input weights of the network [8]. Training the
network and use it for prediction is a chronological process.
The first step involves setting the default value of network error
(MSE) to zero and the training pattern error to one. The hidden
neuron activity is calculated by the unipolar sigmoid function
P ¯
using the equation Sk ¼ f ð ns i¼1 bi vik Þ where k = 1, 2, . . .,
nh. Likewise, the output neuron activity is calculated by using
P
the function oj ¼ f ð nh k¼1 sk wkj Þ where j = 1, 2, 3,. . ., no. The next
Let X be a classification of U where X = {E1, E2, E3, . . ., En}, called
as the classes of X. The approximations of X in I (information
system) is represented by PX ¼ f PE1 ; PE2 ; PE3 ; . . .; PEn g and
P X ¼ fP E1 ; P E2 ; P E3 ; . . .; PEn g. The quality of approximation consists
¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯
the ratio of all definitely/possibly classified objects to the total
objects of the system, which is mathematically expressed as
Pn
ð PE Þ
g P ðXÞ ¼ j¼1U j . For every X 2 U, and P 2 Q the accuracy of the
approximation is defined by N p ðXÞ ¼ Cardð PXÞ=CardðP XÞ.
Table 1 shows the values of upper and lower approximations.
The accuracy of the approximation is 0.612903. The quality of
classification is 0.7600 and the entropy is 0.76908.
[(Fig._4)TD$IG] S. Rawat, S. Rawat / Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34 31

Table 2
START Reducts from the dataset.

Reduct no. Reducts Length

Get the paern and Inialize the weights R1 A1,A2,A3,A8,A10 5

R2 A1,A2,A7,A8,A9,A10 6
R3 A1,A3,A6,A7,A8,A10 6
Iniate the training of the network R4 A1,A3,A4,A7,A8,A9,A10 7
R5 A1,A3,A5,A7,A8,A9,A10 7
R6 A1,A2,A3,A5,A8 5
Pass the training paern from input layer to the hidden layer
R7 A1,A2,A4,A5,A7,A8,A9 7
R8 A1,A2,A4,A7,A8,A10 6
Pass the training paern from hidden layer to the output layer R9 A1,A3,A4,A5,A6,A7,A8 7
R10 A1,A3,A4,A5,A7,A8,A10 7

Find the output node error and hidden node error

observed to be common in each pair. Hence, A1 and A8 represent
the core attributes of the information system.
Adjust the weights between the output and hidden layers
The next step involves the determination of the reduct that is
most appropriate for the final training of the network. All
Adjust the weights between the input and hidden layers 10 reducts are independently sustained to the NN and trained
with BP algorithm. The reduct having the best yield and minimum
MSE will be chosen for the final training of the network.
No
Need a different
training paern 6.3. Step 3. Training with BPNN to recognize the best reduct for the
system
Yes
The 10 reducts indicated in Table 2 are fed to the NN
Determine the funcon value
individually and trained using Levenberg–Marquardt back-propa-
gation (LM-BP) algorithm. The database is divided into three sets.
10% of the samples are utilized for validating the network to stop
Terminaon No
the training before over-fitting happens. 20% of the sample is
criteria achieved
utilized for testing and rest 70% is utilized for training the network.
A two-layered feed forward network employing a sigmoid function
Yes
is used. 10 output samples are taken and tested using LM-BP
END algorithm. Table 3 demonstrates the anticipated values of all the
10 samples trained by the BPNN for all the 10 reducts.
Fig. 4. Flowchart of BPNN for the training of network and prediction of outputs.
From Table 3 it is evident that the estimated output values of
reducts R3, R5 and R7 are very close to the original output values of
the sample. To chose the best reduct among these, mean square
Table 1 error for every one of the reducts is investigated and indicated in
Upper and lower approximation.
Fig. 5.
Decision Total objects present Lower Upper Accuracy It is clearly depicted from the Fig. 4 that the MSE error of R5 is
class in the class approximation approximation the least. This step infers that R5 having 7 input features is best
1 21 14 26 0.5385 suited to train the final network. To realize the accuracy of the
2 29 24 36 0.6667 proposed RS–BPNN, technique it is compared with the conven-
tional testing method of BPNN.

6.2.2. (ii) Finding the core and reducts
In our case, there are 10 input attributes and 1 output attribute.
Applying RST to the database, we discovered 10 reducts that are
shown in Table 2.
Table 2 shows that 10 pairs of reducts extracted from the
database. Taking the intersection of all the reducts, A1 and A8 are
6.4. Step 4. Comparison of BPNN and RS–BPNN
In this step, we have employed the traditional testing approach
of NN with LM-BP algorithm without using RS. All the 10 input
features from the database are fed to the network to train the
system, without reducing any input features.

Table 3
Predicted output values of the reducts.

Testing sample no. Actual value Predicted values of the reducts

R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 R10

1 3.000 2.987 2.955 3.000 2.999 3.000 3.105 2.999 2.927 2.993 3.129
2 4.000 3.992 4.224 4.000 4.000 4.000 3.949 4.000 4.2661 4.000 4.002
3 4.000 4.006 3.603 4.000 4.000 4.000 4.009 3.999 4.393 3.996 3.865
4 3.000 3.006 3.040 3.000 2.999 3.000 2.958 2.999 3.263 2.998 2.902
5 4.000 3.974 3.905 4.000 4.000 4.000 4.076 4.000 3.513 4.004 3.850
6 3.000 2.995 2.926 3.000 2.999 3.000 2.835 3.000 2.799 3.011 3.039
7 4.000 4.017 4.003 4.000 4.000 4.000 4.068 4.000 4.076 4.000 3.661
8 4.000 4.002 3.957 4.000 4.000 4.000 3.943 3.999 3.343 4.011 3.521
9 4.000 3.983 4.142 4.000 4.000 4.000 3.941 3.999 3.820 3.999 4.233
10 3.000 3.006 2.925 3.000 2.999 3.000 3.025 3.000 2.756 2.991 2.978
[(Fig._5)TD$IG]
32 S. Rawat, S. Rawat / Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34

2.00E+00
1.80E+00
1.60E+00
1.40E+00
1.20E+00

MSE
1.00E+00
8.00E-01
6.00E-01
4.00E-01
2.00E-01
0.00E+00
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Reducts

Fig. 5. MSE error of the reducts.

To evaluate the performance of both the methods, experiments
were conducted to determine the relative significance of each
independent parameter of the output. The MSE is served to assess
the differences between the expected and actual values for both
the methods. MSE surveys the quality of the prediction tool by
measuring the average of the squares of the errors, additionally
characterized as the distinction between the estimator and the
assessed worth.
Table 4 demonstrates the comparison between MSE for both the
methods.
It can be evident from Table 4 that network trained with RS–
BPNN has comparatively less testing error than the network
trained with BPNN alone. Similarly, the training error of the former
is lesser than the later. The comparison between both the
methodologies recommends that NN with RS has the more
significant effect than the system trained with NN alone. In
general, RS is used for reducing the unnecessary features from the
dataset. Here, in this case it reduces the undesirable features from
the dataset, making it less demanding for the system to get trained.
Correspondingly, the training error falls to almost null value when
the system is trained with RS. Now, few forecasting samples are
taken as input vectors in the simulation, and the predictions of
Table 4
Comparison of mean square error.
Mean square error
Training error
BPNN 1.544e2
RS–BPNN 0 1.0650
[(Fig._6)TD$IG]
5
4.5
4
3.5
Output values
each goal are obtained. Finally, we are able to compare the
accuracy of predictions from RS–BPNN and BPNN with the original
output values as depicted in Fig. 6.
From Table 4 and Fig. 5, it can be concluded that RS–BPNN has
accomplished a high accuracy as compared to the traditional
approach of BPNN. The system’s forecasting efficiency and
productivity have enhanced extensively while utilizing RS–BPNN.
It can be further inferred that of 10 input features only 7 features
are required for making a well efficient decision system.
Conventional and routine data fusion technologies are highly
inefficient, incapable and ineffective in dealing with multisensory
data. It sometimes leads to a large error gap due to the uncertainty
factors and the external predicaments experienced by the
multisensory data system. Therefore, to avoid the baffling
systematic methods, several AI based methodologies are frequent-
ly utilized today. In this work a soft computing based classifier is
built from the offline signature of the incoming multisensory data
employing a hybrid model of RS and NN. Fig. 7 shows the enhanced
view of the proposed architecture for predicting the pollution level
in the water sources.
The offline network comprises of a RS classifier and BPNN
predictor. RS is used to expel the superfluous information from
database, thus reducing the data size. The crucial features are
distinguished and the dispensable features are removed from the
dataset. In the next phase BPNN is used for training the network
and estimating the decision rules. On the basis of the output of the
classifier, the decision regarding the level of pollution can be easily
Testing error made by the system’s operator. This permits him to take
proprietary steps and initiate the maintenance schedule in time.
1.6928
The problems encounter in the data fusion applications, for
example, multisensory systems drives us to combine data fusion
BP Actual value RS-BP

3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Samples

Fig. 6. Comparison between both the methods and the original values.
[(Fig._7)TD$IG] S. Rawat, S. Rawat / Computers in Industry 75 (2016) 27–34
Fig. 7. An enhanced architecture for the pollution monitoring system.
and data mining. This work shows and discusses about how data
mining and data fusion techniques together can play a mutually
supportive role. This works demonstrates a promising future in the
multisensory data processing fusion system.
7. Conclusion
Data fusion and data mining in the multisensory system for
accomplishing an accurate and precise solution is a challenging
errand. To deal with the problem, this paper attempted to propose
a hybrid architecture that links RST with NN through an example of
pollution monitoring system. RS is used as a preprocessing layer as
a part of the RS–BP network to filter out the noisy, uncertain and
superfluous data. It mines the data and identifies the crucial
features from the dataset. These attributes are fed to the NN that is
trained using LM-BP algorithm. On comparing the prediction
results of BPNN and RS–BPNN, the latter was discovered more
superior than the former. In the future work, we would compare
the accuracy and reliability of the proposed architecture with other
ML and soft computing techniques. Also, we would test the
proposed system in a real time scenario. It would help us to get the
feedback from the system’s control operator so that the system can
be improved. This is an additional aspect of one of the possibilities
of our research in the near future.
Compliance with ethical standards
We, the authors, hereby jointly declare that there is no
conflict of interest of any kind whatsoever, whether directly,
indirectly or materially with respect to financial or non-financial
funding, and use of any humans and animals concerning this
manuscript.
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