Hierarchical Residual-Envelope Trust: A Deterministic Framework for Grouped Multi-Sensor Fusion

Hierarchical Residual-Envelope Trust (HRET) extends the Drift--Slew Fusion Bootstrap (DSFB) framework to structured multi-sensor systems with explicit sensor grouping and correlated disturbance modeling. Unlike stochastic or covariance-based approaches, HRET operates under deterministic bounded disturbance assumptions and modulates trust through residual-envelope dynamics at both channel and group levels. Each sensor channel maintains a residual envelope governing channel-level trust, while group envelopes aggregate residual magnitudes across predefined sensor clusters to capture correlated degradation. Trust weights are composed multiplicatively and normalized to preserve strict convexity, ensuring positive…