Maneuvering multi-target tracking based on variable structure multiple model GMCPHD filter

The traditional multiple model cardinalized probability hypothesis density (MMCPHD) filter uses a fixed model set for all targets. It is clearly inefficient and may cause the decrease of performance in the situations where the size of the model set is large and the scene is complicated. This paper presents a variable structure multiple model (VSMM) version of the Gaussian mixture cardinalized probability hypothesis density (GMCPHD) filter based on the expected mode augmentation (EMA) for the multiple maneuvering target tracking. The GMCPHD filter which is suitable for the VSMM is derived, thus different model sets can be used for different targets. Then EMA algorithm which is an efficient model set adaptation method is introduced and applied to the VSMM version of the GMCPHD (VSMM-GMCPHD) filter. This method costs less computational time and has better estimate precision than that of the traditional multiple model version of GMCPHD (MM-GMCPHD) filter. The gating technique is utilized to further improve the computational efficiency. Simulation results verify the performance of the proposed methods. The estimate precision of VSMM-GMCPHD filters with and without the gate are almost the same, however the former one is more cost-effective. Both of the two VSMM-GMCPHD filters outperform the MM-GMCPHD filter.