Research on the approximation algorithm of the evidential theory

In the Dempster-Shafer theory, the computational complexity is one of the main points of criticism this theory has to face. To solve this problem, many approximation algorithms, which always reduce the focal elements, are proposed. In this paper, a simple optimal approximation is proposed by analyzing its reasonability in quality and quantity. The genetic algorithm is applied for approximation for the first time. Then two fast algorithms, one step approximation and multi-step approximation, are proposed. As a conclusion of simulation these algorithms are better than other algorithms in accuracy and computation burden.