The Sequential Monte Carlo Multi-Bernoulli Filter
for Extended Targets
Meiqin Liu
∗†
,Tongyang Jiang
∗†
, and Senlin Zhang
†
∗
State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P.R. China
†
College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P.R. China
Email: {liumeiqin,jiangtongyang,slzhang}@zju.edu.cn
Abstract—The multi-Bernoulli (MB) filter for extended targets
has been derive d recently. However, the implementation of the
extended target (ET) MB filter for nonlinear non-Gaussian
models has not been presented. In this paper, we propose the
sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) implementation of the ET-MB
filter for estimating multiple extended targets by using the SMC
technique and measurement partitioning algorithm. Simulation
results demonstrate that the estimation performance of the SMC-
ET-MB filter is superior to that of the standard SMC-MB filter
for extended target measurement models.
Index Terms—Random finite set, multi-Bernoulli filter, extend-
ed targets, sequential Monte Carlo
I. INTRODUCTION
In multi-target tracking, the objective is to simultaneously
estimate the number of targets and their states from a sequence
of noisy measurements. Generally, each target is assumed to
be a point which produces at most one measurement per
scan. This assumption is valid when the target is far away
from the sensor or the resolution of sensors is low. For the
high resolution sensor, or the distance between the target and
sensor is small, the sensor may be able to resolve individual
features on the target. Each target may generate more than
one measurement per scan, and the assumption of point targets
is not appropriate. Hence extended target tracking arises. An
extended target is defined as a target that potentially generates
more than one measurement per scan [1].
Extended target tracking has attracted more attention in
recent years. Among various extended target tracking ap-
proaches, we are interested in the random finite set (RFS)
approach. The RFS approach provides another kind of methods
for target tracking [2],[3],[4]. In the RFS approach, targets’
states and measurements are treated as RFSs. With RFS
models, Mahler has proposed the multi-target Bayes filter
that propagates the multi-target posterior density recursively
[2],[5]. Since the optimal multi-target Bayes filter is generally
intractable, some approximated multi-target Bayes filters have
been proposed, such as the probability hypothesis density
(PHD) filter [5] which propagates the first order moment of the
multi-target density, cardinality PHD (CPHD) filter [6] which
propagates the first order moment and cardinality distribution
of the multi-target density, and the multi-Bernoulli (MB) filter
[2],[7] which propagates the parameters of an MB distribution
to approximate the multi-target density. These filters have been
implemented by using Gaussian mixture (GM) and sequential
Monte Carlo (SMC) techniques [7],[8],[9],[10]. The PHD,
CPHD, and MB filters are usually considered for estimating
multiple point targets. Using a Poisson model of extended
target measurements [11], Mahler has derived the PHD filter
for extended targets [12]. The GM implementation of the
ET-PHD filter has been presented in [1],[13]. A Gaussian
inverse Wishart implementation of the ET-PHD filter has been
proposed to jointly estimate targets’ states and extensions. The
CPHD filter for extended targets has been derived in [14], and
the GM implementation of the ET-CPHD filter was presented
in [15]. Subsequently, a Gamma Gaussian inverse Wishart
implementation of the ET-CPHD filter was proposed to jointly
estimate targets’ states and extensions in [16].
Recently, the MB filter for extended targets has been pro-
posed in [17]. A GM implementation of the ET-MB filter
for linear Gaussian models was proposed in [18]. However,
the GM-ET-MB filter cannot be directly applied to nonlinear
non-Gaussian models. With the assumption of point targets,
the SMC-MB filter has been proposed for nonlinear models,
which obtains higher estimation accuracy than SMC-PHD and
SMC-CPHD filters, as the SMC-MB filter does not need the
extra clustering method to extract target states. Hence, in this
paper we propose the SMC implementation of ET-MB filter
for extended targets. Using SMC techniques and the existing
measurement partitioning algorithm, the SMC-ET-MB filter
for estimating multiple extended targets is presented in this
paper.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II reviews the ET-MB filter for extended targets. The SMC
implementation of the ET-MB filter is presented in Section
III. Numerical results for a simulation scenario are offered in
Section IV. Finally, the conclusion is drawn in Section V.
II. T
HE ET-MB FILTER
The MB filter propagates parameters of an MB distribution
to approximate the multi-target Bayes filter. It propagates a
time varying number of target tracks in time. Initially, the
MB filter was proposed for handing point targets. Recently,
based on a Poisson model measurement likelihood proposed
by Gilholm [11], Zhang [17] has derived the MB filter for
extended targets. In this section, the ET-MB filter is reviewed,
for more details see [17]. The ET-MB filter consists of
prediction and update.
18th International Conference on Information Fusion
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