N-dimensional admissibly ordered interval-valued overlap functions and its influence in interval-valued fuzzy rule-based classification systems

Abstract

Overlap functions are a type of aggregation functions that are not required to be associative, generally used to indicate the overlapping degree between two values. They have been successfully used as a conjunction operator in several practical problems, such as fuzzy rulebased classification systems (FRBCSs) and image processing. Some extensions of overlap functions were recently proposed, such as general overlap functions and, in the interval-valued context, n-dimensional interval-valued overlap functions. The latter allow them to be applied in n-dimensional problems with interval-valued inputs, like interval-valued classification problems, where one can apply interval-valued FRBCSs (IV-FRBCSs). In this case, the choice of an appropriate total order for intervals, like an admissible order, can play an important role. However, neither the relationship between the interval order and the n-dimensional interval-valued overlap function (which may or may not be increasing for that order) nor the impact of this relationship in the classification process have been studied in the literature. Moreover, there is not a clear preferred n-dimensional interval-valued overlap function to be applied in an IV-FRBCS. Hence, in this paper we: (i) present some new results on admissible orders, which allow us to introduce the concept of n-dimensional admissibly ordered interval-valued overlap functions, that is, n-dimensional interval-valued overlap functions that are increasing with respect to an admissible order; (ii) develop a width-preserving construction method for this kind of function, derived from an admissible order and an n-dimensional overlap function, discussing some of its features; (iii) analyze the behaviour of several combinations of admissible orders and n-dimensional (admissibly ordered) interval-valued overlap functions when applied in IV-FRBCSs. All in all, the contribution of this paper resides in pointing out the effect of admissible orders and n-dimensional admissibly ordered interval-valued overlap functions, both from a theoretical and applied points of view, the latter when considering classification problems.