Distributed Computation Particle PHD filter

Abstract: Particle probability hypothesis density filtering has become a promising means for multi-target tracking due to its capability of handling an unknown and time-varying number of targets in non-linear non-Gaussian system. However, its computational complexity grows linearly with the number of measurements and particles assigned to each target, and this can be very time consuming especially when numerous targets and clutter exist in the surveillance region. Addressing this issue, we present a distributed computation particle PHD filter for target tracking. Its framework consists of several local particle PHD filters at each processing element and a central unit. Each processing element takes responsibility for part particles but full measurements and provides local estimates; central unit controls particle exchange between processing elements and specifies a fusion rule to match and fuse the estimates from different local filters. The proposed framework is suitable for parallel implementation and maintains the tracking accuracy. Simulations verify the proposed method can provide comparative accuracy as well as a significant speedup with the standard particle PHD filter.