Modified strong tracking unscented Kalman filter for nonlinear state estimation with process model uncertainty

This paper presents a modified strong tracking unscented Kalman filter MSTUKF to address the performance degradation and divergence of the unscented Kalman filter because of process model uncertainty. The MSTUKF adopts the hypothesis testing method to identify process model uncertainty and further introduces a defined suboptimal fading factor into the prediction covariance to decrease the weight of the prior knowledge on filtering solution. The MSTUKF not only corrects the state estimation in the occurrence of process model uncertainty but also avoids the loss of precision for the state estimation in the absence of process model uncertainty. Further, it does not require the cumbersome evaluation of Jacobian matrix involved in the calculation of the suboptimal fading factor. Experimental results and comparison analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MSTUKF. Copyright © 2015John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.