Efficient Approximation of the Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Filter for Online Multitarget Tracking

Online tracking time-varying number of targets is a challenging issue due to measurement noise, target birth or death, and association uncertainty, especially when target number is large. In this paper, we propose an efficient approximation of the Labeled Multi-Bernoulli (LMB) filter to perform online multitarget state estimation and track maintenance efficiently. On the basis of the original LMB filer, we propose a target posterior approximation technique to use a weighted single Gaussian component representing each individual target. Moreover, we present the Gaussian mixture implementation of the proposed efficient approximation of the LMB filter under linear, Gaussian assumptions on the target dynamic model and measurement model. Numerical results verify that our proposed efficient approximation of the LMB filer achieves accurate tracking performance and runs several times faster than the original LMB filer.