An improved operator of combination with adapted conflict

In the belief function theory, combination of reliable or unreliable information sources is concerned for a long time. Recently, Lefèvre and Elouedi proposed an operator called Combination With Adapted Conflict (CWAC) to synthesize all the knowledge of the initial belief functions. However, several problems are existed in the CWAC operator actually. The conflict obtained by using CWAC actually is not reasonable as an alarm in some situation and cannot truly reflect the opposition between the belief functions in the combination. In this paper, the existing problems of CWAC are exposed. And based on the spirit of original CWAC operator, an improved CWAC operator is proposed, which is more reasonable and effective. Some illustrative examples are given to show the effectiveness and strength of the proposed improved CWAC operator.