Stochastic stability of the derivative unscented Kalman filter

This is the second of two consecutive papers focusing on the filtering algorithm for a nonlinear stochastic discrete-time system with linear system state equation. The first paper established a derivative unscented Kalman filter (DUKF) to eliminate the redundant computational load of the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) due to the use of unscented transformation (UT) in the prediction process. The present paper studies the error behavior of the DUKF using the boundedness property of stochastic processes. It is proved that the estimation error of the DUKF remains bounded if the system satisfies certain conditions. Furthermore, it is shown that the design of the measurement noise covariance matrix plays an important role in improvement of the algorithm stability. The DUKF can be significantly stabilized by adding small quantities to the measurement noise covariance matrix in the presence of large initial error. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.