A Basic Convergence Result for Particle Filtering, Report no. LiTH-ISY-R-2781

The basic nonlinear ltering problem for dynamical systems is considered. Approximating the optimal lter estimate by particle lter methods has become perhaps the most common and useful method in recent years. Many variants of particle lters have been suggested, and there is an extensive literature on the theoretical aspects of the quality of the approximation. Still, a clear cut result that the approximate solution, for unbounded functions, converges to the true optimal estimate as the number of particles tends to in nity seems to be lacking. It is the purpose of this contribution to give such a basic convergence result.