Multi-agent decision fusion for motor fault diagnosis

Improvement of recognition rate is ultimate aim for fault diagnosis researchers using pattern recognition techniques. However. the unique recognition method can only recognise a limited classification capability which is insufficient for real-life application. An ongoing strategy is the decision fusion techniques. In order to avoid the shortage of single information source coupled with unique decision method, a new approach is required to obtain better results. This paper proposes a decision fusion system for fault diagnosis, which integrates data sources from different types of sensors and decisions of multiple classifiers. First, non-commensurate sensor data sets are combined using an improved sensor fusion method at a decision level by using relativity theory. The generated decision vectors are then selected based on correlation measure of classifiers in order to find an optimal sequence of classifiers fusion, which can lead to the best fusion performance. Finally, multi-agent classifiers fusion algorithm is employed as the core of the whole fault diagnosis system. The efficiency of the proposed system was demonstrated through fault diagnosis of induction motors. The experimental results show that this system can lead to super performance when compared with the best individual classifier with single-source data. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.