NONLINEAR FILTERING BY APPROXIMATION OF THE A POSTERIORI DENSITY

The problem of estimating from noisy measurement data the state of a dynamical system described by non-linear difference equations is considered. The measurement data have a non-linear relation with the state and are assumed to be available at discrete instants of time. A Bayesian approach to the problem is suggested in which the density function for the state conditioned upon the available measurement data is computed recursively. The evolution of the a posteriori density function cannot be described in a closed form for most systems; the class of linear systems with additive, white gaussian noise provides the major exception. Thus, the problem of non-linear filtering can be viewed as essentially a problem of approximating this density function. For linear systems with additive, white gaussian noise, the a posteriori density is gaussian. The results for linear systems are frequently applied to non-linear systems by introducing linear perturbation theory. Then, the linear equations and gaussian a posterio...