Distributed Kalman Filter

The continuing trend toward connected sensors (“internet of things” and” ubiquitous computing”) drives a demand for powerful distributed estimation methodologies. In tracking applications, the distributed Kalman filter (DKF) provides an optimal solution under Kalman filter conditions. The optimal solution in terms of the estimation accuracy is also achieved by a centralized fusion algorithm, which receives all associated measurements. However, the centralized approach requires full communication of all measurements at each time step, whereas the DKF works at arbitrary communication rates since the calculation is fully distributed. A more recent methodology is based on ”accumulated state density” (ASD), which augments the states from multiple time instants to overcome spatial cross-correlations. This chapter explains the challenges in distributed tracking. Then, possible solutions are derived, which include the DKF and ASD approach