Auxiliary Particle Implementation of the Probability Hypothesis Density Filter

Optimal Bayesian multi-target filtering is, in general, computationally impractical due to the high dimensionality of the multi-target state. Recently Mahler, [9], introduced a filter which propagates the first moment of the multi-target posterior distribution, which he called the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter. While this reduces the dimensionality of the problem, the PHD filter still involves intractable integrals in many cases of interest. Several authors have proposed Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) implementations of the PHD filter. However, these implementations are the equivalent of the Bootstrap Particle Filter, and the latter is well known to be inefficient. Drawing on ideas from the Auxiliary Particle Filter of Pitt and Shephard [10], we present a SMC implementation of the PHD filter which employs auxiliary variables to enhance its efficiency. Numerical examples are also presented.