A multiple model structure for tracking by variable rate particle filters

In contrast to the fixed rate modeling of the conventional methods, recently introduced variable rate particle filters (VRPF) achieves to track maneuvering objects with a small number of states by imposing a probability distribution on state arrival times. Although this enables VRPF an appealing method, representing the target motion dynamics with a single model hinders the capability of estimating maneuver parameters precisely. To overcome this weakness we have incorporated multiple model approach with the variable rate model structure. The introduced model referred as Multiple Model Variable Rate Particle Filter (MM-VRPF) utilizes a parsimonious representation for smooth regions of trajectory while it adaptively locates frequent state points at high maneuver regions, resulting in a much more accurate tracking. Simulation results obtained in a bearings-only target tracking problem show that the proposed model outperforms the conventional VRPF, the fixed rate multiple model particle filters (MMPF) and interacting multiple model using extended Kalman filters (IMM-EKF).