J. Appl. Math. & Computing Vol. 16(2004), No. 1 - 2, pp.

371 - 381

FUZZY METRIC SPACES

ZUN-QUAN XIA AND FANG-FANG GUO

Abstract. In this paper, fuzzy metric spaces are redefined, different from
the previous ones in the way that fuzzy scalars instead of fuzzy numbers
or real numbers are used to define fuzzy metric. It is proved that every
ordinary metric space can induce a fuzzy metric space that is complete
whenever the original one does. We also prove that the fuzzy topology
induced by fuzzy metric spaces defined in this paper is consistent with the
given one. The results provide some foundations for the research on fuzzy
optimization and pattern recognition.
AMS Mathematics Subject Classification: 03E72, 90C70, 15A03.
Key words and phrases : Fuzzy metric space, completeness of fuzzy metric
space, fuzzy topology, fuzzy closed set.

1. Introduction
How to define fuzzy metric is one of the fundamental problems in fuzzy mathematics which is wildly used in fuzzy optimization and pattern recognition. There
are two approaches in this field till now. One is using fuzzy numbers to define
metric in ordinary spaces, firstly proposed by Kaleva (1984)[12], following which
fuzzy normed spaces, fuzzy topology induced by fuzzy metric spaces, fixed point
theorem and other properties of fuzzy metric spaces are studied by a few researchers, see for instance, Felbin (1992)[7], George (1994)[8], George (1997)[9],
Gregori (2000)[10], Hadzic (2002)[11] etc. The other one is using real numbers
to measure the distances between fuzzy sets. The references of this approach can
be referred to, for instance, Dia (1990) [5], Chaudhuri (1996)[4], Boxer (1997)[2],
Received July 27, 2003. Revised October 20, 2003. Corresponding author.
This paper was supported by the National Foundations of Ph. D Units from the Ministry of
Education of China No. 20020141013, the Scientific Research Foundation of DUT No. 3004888.
c 2004 Korean Society For Computational & Applied Mathematics and Korean SIGCAM.

371

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Zun-Quan Xia and Fang-Fang Guo

Fan (1998)[6], Voxmam (1998)[16], Przemyslaw, (1998)[14], Brass (2002)[3]. Results of these researches have been applied to many practical problems in fuzzy
environment. While, usually, different measures are used in different problems
in other words, there does not exist a uniform measure that can be used in all
kinds of fuzzy environments.
Therefore, it is still interesting to find some kind of new fuzzy measure such
that it may be useful for solving some problems in fuzzy environment. The
attempt of the present paper is using fuzzy scalars (fuzzy points defined on
the real-valued space R) to measure the distances between fuzzy points, which
is consistent with the theory of fuzzy linear spaces in the sense of Xia and
Guo (2003) [17] and hence more similar to the classical metric spaces. The
new definitions in this paper are different from the previous ones because fuzzy
scalars are used instead of fuzzy numbers or real numbers to measure the distance
between two fuzzy points. It is the first time that fuzzy scalars are introduced
in measuring the distances between fuzzy points. Some other properties of fuzzy
metric spaces, for instance, completeness and induced fuzzy topology are also
given in this paper.
For the convenience of reading, some basic concepts of fuzzy points and denotations are presented below.
Fuzzy points are the fuzzy sets being of the following form in the sense of Pu
(1980) [15],

, y = x,
x (y) =
y X,
0, y 6= x,
where X is a nonempty set and [0, 1].
In this paper, fuzzy points are usually denoted by (x, ) and the set of all
the fuzzy points defined on X is denoted by PF (X). Particularly, when X = R,
fuzzy points are also called fuzzy scalars and the set of all the fuzzy scalars
is denoted by SF (R). A fuzzy set A can be regarded as a set of fuzzy points
belonging to it, i.e.,
A = {(x, )| A(x) }
or a set of fuzzy points on it,
A = {(x, )|A(x) = }.
This paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, fuzzy metric spaces, strong
fuzzy metric spaces and fuzzy linear normed spaces are defined and some examples are given to show the existence of these kinds of spaces; In Section 3,
the convergence of sequences of fuzzy points and the completeness of induced
fuzzy metric spaces are considered; In the last section, it is proved that the fuzzy
topology induced by fuzzy metric spaces is consistent with the given one, see for
instance, Pu (1980), [15], which implies in another way the usefulness of the
fuzzy metric spaces defined in Section 2.

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373

2. Fuzzy metric spaces

The purpose of this section mainly consists in defining fuzzy metric spaces,
strong fuzzy metric spaces and fuzzy normed linear spaces. To do so, we first
give some definitions related to fuzzy scalars.
Definition 1. Suppose (x, ) and (y, ) are two fuzzy scalars. A series of definitions contains the following ones:
(1) we say (a, )  (b, ) if a > b or (a, ) = (b, );
(2) (a, ) is said to be no less than (b, ) if a b, denoted by (a, )  (b, )
or (b, ) (a, );
(3) (a, ) is said to be nonnegative if a 0. The set of all the nonnegative
fuzzy scalars is denoted by SF+ (R).
Obviously, the orders defined in Definition 1(1) and Definition 1(2) are both
partial orders. Note that when R is considered as a subset of SF (R), (R, ) and
(R, ) are the same as (R, ). Thus both  and  can be viewed as some kind
of generalization of the ordinary complete order . It is obvious that the order
defined in Definition 1(1) is stronger than the one in Definition 1(2).
We now present the definition of fuzzy metric spaces. It will be seen that it is
very similar to the definition of ordinary metric spaces except that is replaced
by in the triangle inequality. This is because that there exist no reasonable
complete order in SF (R)+ .
Definition 2. Suppose X is a nonempty set and
dF : PF (X) PF (X) SF+ (R)
is a mapping. (PF (X), dF ) is said to be a fuzzy metric space if for any {(x, ),
(y, ), (z, )} PF (X), dF satisfies the following three conditions,
(1) Nonnegative: dF ((x, ), (y, )) = 0 iff x = y and = = 1;
(2) Symmetric:
dF ((x, ), (y, )) = dF ((y, ), (x, ));
(3) Triangle inequality:
dF ((x, ), (z, )) dF ((x, ), (y, )) + dF ((y, ), (z, )).
dF is called a fuzzy metric defined in PF (X) and dF ((x, ), (y, )) is called a
fuzzy distance between the two fuzzy points.
Note that fuzzy metric spaces have fuzzy points as their elements, i.e., they
are sets of fuzzy points. There are many fuzzy metric spaces in the sense of
Definition 2. To show this, some examples are presented below.

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Zun-Quan Xia and Fang-Fang Guo

Example 1. Suppose (X, d) is an ordinary metric space. The distance of any

two fuzzy points (x, ), (y, ) in PF (X) is defined by
dF ((x, ), (y, )) = (d(x, y), min{, }),
where d(x, y) is the distance between x and y defined in (X, d).Then (PF (X), dF )
is a fuzzy metric space.
Proof. It suffices to prove that dF satisfies the three conditions in Definition 2.
Nonnegative: Suppose (x, ) and (y, ) are two fuzzy points in PF (X). Since
d(x, y) is a distance between x and y, one has d(x, y) 0. It follows from
Definition 1 that dF ((x, ), (y, )) = (d(x, y), min{, }) is a nonnegative fuzzy
scalar. It is obvious that dF ((x, ), (y, )) = 0 iff d(x, y) = 0 and min{, } = 1
which is equal to that x = y and = = 1.
Symmetric: For any {(x, ), (y, )} PF (X), one has
dF ((x, ), (y, ))

= (d(x, y), min{, })

= (d(y, x), min{, })
= dF ((y, ), (x, )).

Triangle inequality: For any {(x, ), (y, ), (z, )} PF (X), we have

dF ((x, ), (z, ))

=
=

(d(x, z), min{, })

(d(x, y) + d(y, z), min{, , })
(d(x, y), min{, }) + (d(y, z), min{, })
d((x, ), (y, )) + d((y, ), (z, )).


Example 2. We denote Rn the usual n-dimensional Euclidean space. Suppose

L is a fuzzy linear space defined in Rn . The distance between arbitrary two fuzzy
points (x, ), (y, ) belonging to L, denoted by dF E ((x, ), (y, )), is defined by
dF E ((x, ), (y, )) = (dE (x, y), min{, }),
where dE is the usual Euclidean distance. Then (L, dEF ) is also a fuzzy metric
space, where L is also viewed as the set of fuzzy points belonging to the fuzzy
set L.
Proof. Since Rn is a metric space in the ordinary sense and L can be regarded
as a subset of PF (Rn ), dF E is a fuzzy metric from Example 1.

The two examples given above show that a fuzzy (linear) metric space can
be constructed by a (linear) metric space in the usual sense, called an induced
(linear) metric space of it and the metric of the space is called an induced metric
of the original one.

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375

Since SF+ (R) is not a complete ordered set, in the triangle inequality of Definition 2, is replaced by which is much weaker than it. A natural question is
that whether there exist some kind of fuzzy metric spaces satisfying the triangle
inequality with some partial order stronger than , for example, . The answer
is positive and they are called strong fuzzy metric spaces.
Definition 3. Suppose X is a nonempty set and dF : PF (X)PF (X) SF+ (R)
is a mapping. (PF (X), dF ) is said to be a strong fuzzy metric space if it satisfies
the first two conditions in Definition 2 and for any (x, ), (y, ), (z, ) in PF (X),
one has
(30 ) dF ((x, ), (z, ))  dF ((x, ), (y, )) + dF ((y, ), (z, )).
It is obvious from Definition 2 and Definition 3 that every strong fuzzy metric
space is a fuzzy metric space. The following example shows the existence of
strong fuzzy metric spaces and the difference between these two kinds of spaces.
Example 3. L is a fuzzy linear space defined in Rn . The distance between
arbitrary two fuzzy points (x, ) and (y, ) on L is defined by
dF E ((x, ), (y, )) = (dE (x, y), min{, }),

(1)

where dE is the Euclidean distance. Then (L, dF E ) is a strong fuzzy metric

space where L denote the set of fuzzy points on the fuzzy set L.
Proof. The first two conditions can be proved just as Example 1. Here we only
prove the third one.
Given arbitrary three fuzzy points on L, (x, ), (y, )and(z, ). Since (Rn , dE )
is a metric space, one has
dE (x, z) dE (y, z) + dE (x, y).

(2)

In the case of that inequality (2) holds strictly, it is obvious from Definition 1(1)
that condition (30 ) is satisfied. In the other case, there must exists some F
such that y = (1)x+z. Let = min{, }. We have that {x, z} L . Since
L is a fuzzy linear space, L is a linear subspace of Rn (see the Representation
Theorem of fuzzy linear spaces due to Lowen (1980), [13]). It follows that y L ,
i.e., = L(y) = min{, }. This implies that min{, , } = min{, }.
Thus, one has
dF E ((x, ), (z, )) = (dE (x, z), min{, })
= (dE (x, y) + dE (y, z), min{, , })
= dF E ((x, ), (y, )) + dF E ((y, ), (z, )).
Consequently, condition (30 ) is satisfied.

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Note that the strong fuzzy metric space given above is a set of fuzzy points
on some fuzzy linear space. Different from it, the fuzzy metric space in Example
2 comprises fuzzy points belonging to a fuzzy linear space. The difference is
caused by that is replaced by the partial order  which is much stronger than
it.
Definition 4. Suppose that L is a fuzzy linear space. (L, k k) is said to be a
fuzzy linear normed space if the mapping k k : L SF+ (R) satisfies:
(a) k(x, )k = 0 if and only if x = 0 and = 1;
(b) For any k R and (x, ) L, one has kk(x, )k = |k| k(x, )k;
(c) For any {(x, ), (y, )} L, one has k(x, ) + (y, )k  k(x, )k + k(y, )k.
The mapping k k : x 7 kxk is called the fuzzy norm of (L, k k). Note that a
fuzzy linear normed space L has fuzzy points belonging to the fuzzy set L as its
elements.
Example 4. Let (G, || ||G ) be a linear normed space defined on R. L is a fuzzy
linear space defined in G and k kF G is a mapping from L to SF (R)+ defined by
k(x, )kF G := (kxkG , ),

(x, ) L.

Then (L, k kF G ) is a fuzzy linear normed space which can be verified similar to
Example 2.
The following proposition given without proof shows the relationship between
fuzzy linear normed spaces and fuzzy metric spaces.
Proposition 1. Suppose (L, k kF G ) is a fuzzy linear normed space. Then
(L, dF G ) is a fuzzy metric space, where dF G is defined by
dF G ((x, ), (y, )) := k(x, ) (y, )kF G .
Proof. It is omitted.

Taking G = Rn in Example 4, we have the following proposition, which shows

the relationship between fuzzy norm and inner product of fuzzy points.
Proposition 2. Suppose (L, k kF E ) is a fuzzy linear normed space defined in
Rn . For any (x, ) L, one has
< (x, ), (x, ) >= k(x, )k2F E ,
where the inner product is defined in the sense of Xia and Guo (2003) [17], i.e.,
< (x, ), (y, ) >= (< x, y >, min{, }).

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377

Proof. From the definition of inner product of fuzzy points, one has
< (x, ), (x, ) > =
=
=
=

(< x, x >, )
(kxk2E , )
(kxkE , ) (kxkE , )
k(x, )k2F E ,

where k kE is the Euclidean norm.

3. The completeness of fuzzy metric spaces

In this section, we mainly consider the convergence of a sequence of fuzzy
points and the completeness of induced fuzzy metric spaces. Since fuzzy scalars
are used to measure the distances between fuzzy points, the convergence of a
sequence of fuzzy scalars is considered first.
Definition 5. Let {(an , n )} be a sequence of fuzzy scalars. It is said to be
convergent to a fuzzy scalar (a, ), 6= 0, denoted by limn (an , n ) = (a, ) if
limn an = a, {i |i < , i N} is a finite set and there exists a subsequence
of {i }, denoted by {l }, such that limn l = .
The requirement that almost all the i N satisfy i is natural since we
hope that the degree of the convergence is not less than . A new definition of
the convergence of a sequence of fuzzy points is presented below based on the
fuzzy metric given in the last section.
Definition 6. Suppose (PF (X), dF ) is the induced fuzzy metric space of (X, d)
and {(xn , n )} is a sequence of fuzzy points in (PF (X), dF ). {(xn , n )} is said
to be convergent to a fuzzy point (x, ), if limn dF ((xn , n ), (x, )) = 0 and
for any (0, 1] such that limn dF ((xn , n ), (x, )) = 0 , one has .
(x, ) is called the limit of the sequence, denoted by limn (xn , n ) = (x, ).
Proposition 3. Suppose {(xn , n )} is a sequence of fuzzy points in (PF (X), dF )
and (x, ) (PF (X), dF ), 6= 0. We have that limn (xn , n ) = (x, ) if and
only if limn xn = x, {i |i < , i N} is a finite set and there exists a
subsequence of {i }, denoted by {l }, such that limn l = .
Proof. It is omitted.

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Definition 7. A sequence of fuzzy points (xn , n ) (PF (X), dF ) is said to be

a Cauchy sequence if there exists some (0, 1] such that
lim dF ((xm+n , m+n ), (xn , n )) = 0 ,

m N.

Note that every Cauchy sequence of fuzzy points defined above has a unique
fuzzy point as its limit, which is very similar to the classical one. We now begin
to consider the completeness of fuzzy metric spaces.
Definition 8. An induced fuzzy metric space is said to be complete if any
Cauchy sequence in it has a unique limit in the space.
Theorem 1. Suppose (PF (X), dF ) is the induced fuzzy metric space of an ordinary metric space (X, d). Then it is complete iff (X, d) is complete.
Proof. Necessity (Only if) : It is obvious.
Sufficiency (If) : Suppose {(xn , n )} is an arbitrary Cauchy sequence of
(PF (X), dF ). Since (X, d) is complete and limn d(xm+n , xn ) = 0 for any
m N, there must exists some x X such that limn xn = x. For any
m N, denote the index set {l|l = min{m+n , n }, n = 1, 2 } by Lm .
From the definition of Cauchy sequences of fuzzy points, there exists some
(0, 1] such that for any m N, the set {l |l < , l Lm } is finite and there
exists a subsequence of {l }lLm , denoted by {k }, which is also a subsequence
of {n }, such that limk k = . It is obvious that
{l|l < , l Lm } {n|n < , n = 1, 2, }.
Consequently, {n |n < , n = 1, 2, } is also a finite set. From the above
arguments, we have limn (xn , n ) = (x, ). It implies that there exists a
limit of {xn , n } in PF (X). In the following we prove the uniqueness. By
contradiction, assume that there is another limit of the same Cauchy sequence
{(xn , n )}. Since we know x is the unique limit of {xn }, we can denote by (x, )
the limit different from (x, ), 6= , say > . Then we have {n |n < }
is a finite set. From the above arguments, we know that limk k = and
{k |k < } is a finite set. Thus, taking = +
2 , we have
{k } [, ] {n |n < }
is an infinite set. This contradicts that {n |n < } is a finite set. Therefore,
there is only one limit of the Cauchy sequence.

Note that a strong fuzzy linear metric space is generally not complete. It can
be seen through the counter-example given below.

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379

Example 5. Consider the strong fuzzy linear metric space (L, dF E ), where


1 [
L = (x, )|x R \ {0}, =
{(0, 1)}
2
and dF E is induced by the ordinary Euclidean metric dE . The sequence {( n1 , 12 )}
in L is a Cauchy sequence in the sense of Definition 7. However, the limit of the
sequence, (0, 12 ) is not on the space L.

4. The fuzzy topology spaces induced by fuzzy metric spaces

Fuzzy metric spaces given in this paper have many similar properties to the
ordinary metric spaces. Except the relationship between distances and inner
products of fuzzy points mentioned in the Section 2, a conclusion similar to that
every metric space can induce a topology will be proved in this section. Here
we introduce fuzzy topology in the sense of Pu (1980) [15] via fuzzy closed sets.
It provides a convenient method to construct a fuzzy topology of any ordinary
metric space. To do this, the definition of fuzzy closed sets with respect to
induced fuzzy metric spaces is given first. Suppose (X, d) is an ordinary metric
space. Since a fuzzy set A in X can be viewed as a set of fuzzy points belonging
to it, A can be regarded as a subset of PF (X), called a fuzzy set in the induced
fuzzy metric space (PF (X), dF ) in the following definition.
Definition 9. A fuzzy set A in (PF (X), dF ) is said to be closed if the limit of
any Cauchy sequence in A belongs to it. A fuzzy set A in (PF (X), dF ) is said
to be open if A0 is a fuzzy closed set, where A0 is defined by A0 (x) = 1 A(x),
for any x X.
The following proposition shows that the new definition of fuzzy closed sets
is reasonable.
Proposition 4. A fuzzy set A in (PF (X), dF ) is closed if and only if every
-cut set of A, [0, 1], is a closed set in (X, d) in the ordinary sense.
Proof. It is omitted.

In the following we will show that every induced fuzzy metric space can induce
a fuzzy topology. To prove it, a lemma about Cauchy sequences of fuzzy points
is given.

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Zun-Quan Xia and Fang-Fang Guo

Lemma 1. Any subsequence of a Cauchy sequence of fuzzy points is also a

Cauchy sequence and has the same limit as the original one.
Proof. It is obvious from Definition 7.

Theorem 2. Suppose (PF (X), dF ) is the induced fuzzy metric space of a metric
space (X, d). Then (X, TF ) is a fuzzy topology space in the sense of Pu (1980)
[15], called the fuzzy topology space induced by (PF (X), dF ), where TF is defined
by
TF = {A PF (X)|A is a fuzzy closed set in (PF (X), dF )}.
Proof. It suffices to prove that TF satisfies the three conditions in the definition
of fuzzy topology due to Pu (1980) [15].
(1) It is obvious that X and are fuzzy closed sets.
(2) For any {A, B} TF , we prove in the following that A B TF . For
any Cauchy sequence of fuzzy points {(yn , n )} included in A B, A or B,
say A, must contain a subsequence {(ym , m )} of {(yn , n )}. From Lemma 1,
{(ym , m )} is also a Cauchy sequence and hence has a limit. Since A is a closed
fuzzy set, the limit of {(ym , m )} which is also the limit of {(yn , n )} is included
in A. In consequence, the limit of {(yn , n )} is included in A B, which implies
that A B TF .
(3) For any {A
T i }iI TF , where I is an arbitrary indexTset, it only need to
be proved that iI Ai TF . For any Cauchy sequence in iI Ai , denoted by
{(xn , n )}, we have that {(xn , n )} Ai for any i I. Since every Ai T
is a closed
fuzzy set, the limit of {(xn , n )} is in Ai for any i I. It follows that
iI Ai is
T
a closed fuzzy set in the sense of Definition 9. Therefore one has iI Ai TF .
The proof is completed.

From the theorem given above we know that every fuzzy metric space can
induce a fuzzy topology space, which implies in another way that the fuzzy
measure defined in this paper is not only reasonable but also significant.

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appear.
Fang-Fang Guo is a student for Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Xia. She received her
masters degree from Liaoning Normal University in 2001. Her research interesting focus
on fuzzy convex analysis, fuzzy optimization and numerical method and fuzzy reasoning.
Laboratory 2, CORA, Department of Applied Mathematics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, P. R. China
e-mail: gracewuo@163.com
Zun-Quan Xia is a professor in Department of Applied Mathematics, Dalian University of
Technology, Dalian, China. He graduated from Institute of Mathematics, Fudan University,
Shanghai, as a graduate student in 1968, His research areas are (smooth, nonsmooth,
discrete and numerical) optimization and applications (in science and technology) OR
methods and applications.
Laboratory 2, CORA, Department of Applied Mathematics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, P. R. China
e-mail: zqxiazhh@dlut.edu.cn