Some improved results on communication between information systems

To study the communication between information systems, Wang et al. [C. Wang, C. Wu, D. Chen, Q. Hu, and C. Wu, Communicating between information systems, Information Sciences 178 (2008) 3228-3239] proposed two concepts of type-1 and type-2 consistent functions. Some properties of such functions and induced relation mappings have been investigated there. In this paper, we provide an improvement of the aforementioned work by disclosing the symmetric relationship between type-1 and type-2 consistent functions. We present more properties of consistent functions and induced relation mappings and improve upon several deficient assertions in the original work. In particular, we unify and extend type-1 and type-2 consistent functions into the so-called neighborhood-consistent functions. This provides a convenient means for studying the communication between information systems based on various neighborhoods.