Design Methodology for Domain Specific Parameterizable Particle Filter Realizations

This paper presents a reconfigurable particle filter design methodology for a real-time bearings-only tracking application. The methodology provides the capability of selecting a single particle filter from multiple particle filter realizations with maximum resource sharing. The autonomous buffer controller mechanism for the architecture ensures correct operation of the particle filters. Parameter adaptation and algorithm reconfiguration can be accomplished with negligible reconfiguration overhead through buffer controllers and a set of switches for transforming dataflow structures such that any desired particle filter can be implemented. Two target particle filters, sample importance resample filter (SIRF) and Gaussian particle filter (GPF), are realized using field programmable gate array (FPGA) based on the proposed methodology. However, the architecture can be extended for a wide range of particle filters with different sets of dynamics. This paper successfully demonstrates that implementation of a domain specific processor for particle filters is feasible with performance that is much higher than that of commercially available digital signal processors (DSPs).