Fuzzy Logic

Introduction
M. Hellmann
Laboratoire Antennes Radar Telecom, F.R.E CNRS 2272, Equipe Radar Polarimetrie,
Université de Rennes 1, UFR S.P.M, Campus de Beaulieu - Bat. 22,
263 Avenue General Leclerc, CS 74205, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France
1.INTRODUCTION
Fuzzy Logic was initiated in 1965 [1], [2], [3], by Lotfi A. Zadeh ,
professor for computer science at the University of California in
Berkeley. Basically, Fuzzy Logic (FL) is a multivalued logic, that allows
intermediate values to be defined between conventional evaluations
like true/false, yes/no, high/low, etc. Notions like rather tall or very fast
can be formulated mathematically and processed by computers, in
order to apply a more human-like way of thinking in the programming
of computers [4]. Fuzzy systems is an alternative to traditional notions
of set membership and logic that has its origins in ancient Greek
philosophy. The precision of mathematics owes its success in large part
to the efforts of Aristotle and the philosophers who preceded him. In
their efforts to devise a concise theory of logic, and later mathematics,
the so-called "Laws of Thought" were posited [5]. One of these, the
"Law of the Excluded Middle," states that every proposition must either
be True or False. Even when Parminedes proposed the first version of
this law (around 400 B.C.) there were strong and immediate objections:
for example, Heraclitus proposed that things could be simultaneously
True and not True. It was Plato who laid the foundation for what would
become fuzzy logic, indicating that there was a third region (beyond
True and False) where these opposites "tumbled about." Other, more
modern philosophers echoed his sentiments, notably Hegel, Marx, and
Engels. But it was Lukasiewicz who first proposed a systematic
alternative to the bi-valued logic of Aristotle [6]. Even in the present
time some Greeks are still outstanding examples for fussiness and
fuzziness, (note: the connection to logic got lost somewhere during the
last 2 mileniums [7]). Fuzzy Logic has emerged as a a profitable tool for
the controlling and steering of of systems and complex industrial
processes, as well as for household and entertainment electronics, as
well as for other expert systems and applications like the classification
of SAR data.
2. FUZZY SETS AND CRISP SETS
The very basic notion of fuzzy systems is a fuzzy (sub)set. In classical
mathematics we are familiar with what we call crisp sets. For example,
the possible interferometric coherence values are the set X of all real
numbers between 0 and 1. From this set X a subset A can be defined,
(e.g. all values 0 0.2). The characteristic function of A , (i.e. this
function assigns a number 1 or 0 to each element in X , depending on
whether the element is in the subset A or not) is shown in Fig.1.

Figure 1: Characteristic Function of a Crisp Set

The elements which have been assigned the number 1 can be
interpreted as the elements that are in the set A and the elements
which have assigned the number 0 as the elements that are not in the
set A . This concept is sufficient for many areas of applications, but it
can easily be seen, that it lacks in flexibility for some applications like
classification of remotely sensed data analysis. For example it is well
known that water shows low interferometric coherence in SAR images.
Since starts at 0, the lower range of this set ought to be clear. The
upper range, on the other hand, is rather hard to define. As a first
attempt, we set the upper range to 0.2. Therefore we get B as a crisp
interval B=[0,0.2]. But this means that a value of 0.20 is low but a
value of 0.21 not. Obviously, this is a structural problem, for if we
moved the upper boundary of the range from =0.20 to an arbitrary
point we can pose the same question. A more natural way to construct
the set B would be to relax the strict separation between low and not
low. This can be done by allowing not only the (crisp) decision Yes/No,
but more flexible rules like " fairly low". A fuzzy set allows us to define
such a notion. The aim is to use fuzzy sets in order to make computers
more 'intelligent', therefore, the idea above has to be coded more
formally. In the example, all the elements were coded with 0 or 1. A
straight way to generalize this concept, is to allow more values
between 0 and 1. In fact, infinitely many alternatives can be allowed
between the boundaries 0 and 1, namely the unit interval I = [0, 1].
The interpretation of the numbers, now assigned to all elements is
much more difficult. Of course, again the number 1 assigned to an
element means, that the element is in the set B and 0 means that the
element is definitely not in the set B. All other values mean a gradual
membership to the set B. This is shown in Fig. 2. The membership
function is a graphical representation of the magnitude of participation
of each input. It associates a weighting with each of the inputs that are
processed, define functional overlap between inputs, and ultimately
determines an output response. The rules use the input membership
values as weighting factors to determine their influence on the fuzzy
output sets of the final output conclusion.

Figure 2: Characteristic Function of a Fuzzy Set

The membership function, operating in this case on the fuzzy set of
interferometric coherence g, returns a value between 0.0 and 1.0. For
example, an interferometric coherence g of 0.3 has a membership of
0.5 to the set low coherence (see Fig. 2). It is important to point out the
distinction between fuzzy logic and probability. Both operate over the
same numeric range, and have similar values: 0.0 representing False
(or non-membership), and 1.0 representing True (or full-membership).
However, there is a distinction to be made between the two
statements: The probabilistic approach yields the natural-language
statement, "There is an 50% chance that g is low," while the fuzzy
terminology corresponds to "g's degree of membership within the set
of low interferometric coherence is 0.50." The semantic difference is
significant: the first view supposes that g is or is not low; it is just that
we only have an 50% chance of knowing which set it is in. By contrast,
fuzzy terminology supposes that g is "more or less" low, or in some
other term corresponding to the value of 0.50.
4. OPERATIONS ON FUZZY SETS
We can introduce basic operations on fuzzy sets. Similar to the
operations on crisp sets we also want to intersect, unify and negate
fuzzy sets. In his very first paper about fuzzy sets [1], L. A. Zadeh
suggested the minimum operator for the intersection and the
maximum operator for the union of two fuzzy sets. It can be shown
that these operators coincide with the crisp unification, and
intersection if we only consider the membership degrees 0 and 1. For
example, if A is a fuzzy interval between 5 and 8 and B be a fuzzy
number about 4 as shown in the Figure below

Figure 3: Example fuzzy sets

In this case, the fuzzy set between 5 and 8 AND about 4 is

Figure 4: Example: Fuzzy AND

set between 5 and 8 OR about 4 is shown in the next figure

Figure 5: Example: Fuzzy OR

the NEGATION of the fuzzy set A is shown below

Figure 6: Example: Fuzzy NEGATION

5. FUZZY CLASSIFICATION
Fuzzy classifiers are one application of fuzzy theory. Expert knowledge
is used and can be expressed in a very natural way using linguistic
variables , which are described by fuzzy sets

Figure 7: Example: Linguistic Variables

Now the expert knowledge for this variables can be formulated as a
rules like
IF feature A low AND feature B medium AND feature C medium AND
feature D medium THEN Class = class 4
The rules can be combined in a table calls rule base

Table 1: Example for a fuzzy rule base: Rules read as (e.g. RULE No.1:
IF is low AND is med. AND is med AND is med. THEN pixel is
class 1
R# feature A feature B feature C feature D class
1: low medium medium medium class1
2: medium high medium low class2
3: low high medium high class3
4: low high medium high class 1
5: medium medium medium medium class 4
...: ... ... ... ... ...
N: low high medium low unknown

Linguistic rules describing the control system consist of two parts; an

antecedent block (between the IF and THEN) and a consequent block
(following THEN). Depending on the system, it may not be necessary to
evaluate every possible input combination, since some may rarely or
never occur. By making this type of evaluation, usually done by an
experienced operator, fewer rules can be evaluated, thus simplifying
the processing logic and perhaps even improving the fuzzy logic
system performance. The inputs are combined logically using the AND
operator to produce output response values for all expected inputs.
The active conclusions are then combined into a logical sum for each
membership function. A firing strength for each output membership
function is computed. All that remains is to combine these logical sums
in a defuzzification process to produce the crisp output. E.g for a for
the rule consequents for each class a so-called singleton or a min-max
interference can be derived which is the characteristic function of the
respective set . E.g. For the input pair of and the
scheme below (see Figure 7.) would apply.
 Figure 8: Interference for rule IF H very low AND a low THEN Class = class 1
The fuzzy outputs for all rules are finally aggregated to one fuzzy set.To
obtain a crisp decision from this fuzzy output, we have to defuzzify the
fuzzy set, or the set of singletons. Therefore, we have to choose one
representative value as the final output. There are several heuristic
methods (defuzzification methods), one of them is e.g. to take the
center of gravity of the fuzzy set as shown in figure 7., which is widely
used for fuzzy sets. For the discrete case with singletons usually the
the maximum-method is used where the point with the maximum
singleton is chosen.

Figure 9: Defuzzification using the center of gravity approach

4.1. EXAMPLE: CLASSIFICATION OF POLARIMETRIC SAR DATA
One way to use the the fuzzy logic approach for the classification of
SAR data is to applied a fuzzy rule base in order to incorporate expert
knowledge. These rules are given in a descriptive way and one may
use techniques of approximate reasoning to evaluate them. In the
literature there is a variety of textbooks dealing with this subject [15],
[16], and the example below is used to illustrate the strategy.

Table 2: Classification rules

 H Decision
very high medium urban
high or very high very low medium/high urban
high high forest
medium high medium/high forest
medium medium medium/low vegetation
medium low or very low low vegetation
(very) low runway

First we fix a set of 'expert rules' which are used to classify the image.
E.g. the third line reads: IF is high AND is high THEN pixel is of
class 'forest'. Every term in each rule such as ' is high' is a so-called
linguistic variable, i.e. is of an imprecise nature. Following Zadeh [1]
one can describe them with fuzzy sets. A fuzzy set A is defined by a

membership function from the universe of discourse (i.e. the

possible values of the variable - for the entropy H,

for the -angle) to the closed unit interval [0,1]. We

interpret as the degree of membership of x in A . The linguistic

variables and their representation as fuzzy sets are shown in Fig. 10 .
For the entropy and - angle parameters it is possible to define the
fuzzy sets data independently. This is - in general - not possible for the
first eigenvalue as its range depends on the data. So these fuzzy sets
for the linguistic variables have to be interactively defined. To this end,
in order to visualize the first eigenvalue, the logarithm of it is used and
scaled it to the grey scale interval [0,255]. From this interval six
occurring (grey)values are chosen (e.g. ranging from very low (water or
any very smooth surface) to very high (reflections from buildings).
These values determine the shape of the membership functions (Fig.
10). For computational simplicity in all cases triangular or trapezoid
were chosen.
 Figure 10: The linguistic variables and their representation as fuzzy sets
The algorithm now determines the class of an image pixel following the
expert rules of Tab. 2 according to the Mamdani approach for fuzzy
control [15].

Figure 11: Fuzzy classification scheme

Input to the system is a triple of values ( ) for the image pixel. In

a first step this triple is fuzzified, i.e. for each linguistic variable the

degree is determined to which fulfills it. This is done by

evaluating the values of the corresponding membership functions. For
example for the triple =[100,0.5,30)] the degree of 'medium

' is . The degree of the rule antecedents is then

computed by taking the minimum of all present degrees. This degree is
also chosen as the degree with which the rule is fulfilled, i.e. the
degree of the rule consequent. E.g. the triple (100,0.5,30) fulfills the
third rule with degree

.
The degree of the class 'forest' is then computed by taking the
maximum of all rules describing this class i.e.

. A pixel may thus

belong to several classes with certain degrees, a fact which reflects
very well the problem of having more than one class in one resolution
cell. To obtain a crisp classification from this fuzzy classification the
fuzzy output of the system has to be defuzzified. For example, his can
be done by assigning the class with maximum degree to the pixel.
However, with this last step information is lost. For example, a pixel
belonging to the class 'forest' with degree 0.8 and to the class 'urban'
with degree 0.9 is assigned to the class 'urban', whereas the
representation of the pixel as 'forest or urban' would be more
appropriate. This additional information is a particular advantage of a
fuzzy system compared to crisp classification systems. For example, in
a subsequent context based Filtering this information can be evaluated
if a pixel belonging to class A is surrounded by pixels belonging to class
B and the membership value for for class B of the pixel of interest is
also high the pixel is assigned to class B.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Fuzzy Logic provides a different way to approach a control or
classification problem. This method focuses on what the system should
do rather than trying to model how it works. One can concentrate on
solving the problem rather than trying to model the system
mathematically, if that is even possible. On the other hand the fuzzy
approach requires a sufficient expert knowledge for the formulation of
the rule base, the combination of the sets and the defuzzification. In
General, the employment of fuzzy logic might be helpful, for very
complex processes, when there is no simple mathematical model (e.g.
Inversion problems), for highly nonlinear processes or if the processing
of (linguistically formulated) expert knowledge is to be performed.
According to literature the employment of fuzzy logic is not
recommendable, if the conventional approach yields a satisfying result,
an easily solvable and adequate mathematical model already exists ,
or the problem is not solvable ;)
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