Target tracking by fusion of random measures

In this paper we propose fusion methods for tracking a single target in a sensor network. The sensors use sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) techniques to process the received measurements and obtain random measures of the unknown states. We apply standard particle filtering (SPF) and cost-reference particle filtering (CRPF) methods. For both types of filtering, the random measures contain particles drawn from the state space. Associated to the particles, the SPF has weights representing probability masses, while the CRPF has user-defined costs measuring the quality of the particles. Summaries of the random measures are sent to the fusion center which combines them into a global summary. Similarly, the fusion center may send a global summary to the individual sensors that use it for improved tracking. Through extensive simulations and comparisons with other methods, we study the performance of the proposed algorithms. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2007.