On the Convergence of Belief Propagation for Multipath Data Association in Target Tracking
Abstract
Belief propagation (BP) is widely used for data association (DA) in target tracking. Existing convergence analyses of BP for DA address only the two-way correspondence between targets and measurements, where each target generates at most one measurement per scan. Multipath DA (MPDA) allows a single target to produce multiple measurements via distinct propagation paths, creating a three-way correspondence among targets, paths, and measurements, for which a complete convergence proof has not yet been provided. We provide such a proof for the BP updates in MPDA, establishing convergence to a unique fixed point. Simulations illustrate the convergence behavior of BP in MPDA and demonstrate a favorable accuracy--efficiency trade-off relative to both single-scan and two-scan variants of the multiple-detection multiple-hypothesis tracker.
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BibTeX
@misc{yang2026convergence,
title = {{On the Convergence of Belief Propagation for Multipath Data Association in Target Tracking}},
author = {Kuilong Yang and Zengfu Wang and Hua Lan},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.08521},
eprint = {2607.08521},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08521},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - On the Convergence of Belief Propagation for Multipath Data Association in Target Tracking
AU - Kuilong Yang
AU - Zengfu Wang
AU - Hua Lan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.08521
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08521
AB - Belief propagation (BP) is widely used for data association (DA) in target tracking. Existing convergence analyses of BP for DA address only the two-way correspondence between targets and measurements, where each target generates at most one measurement per scan. Multipath DA (MPDA) allows a single target to produce multiple measurements via distinct propagation paths, creating a three-way correspondence among targets, paths, and measurements, for which a complete convergence proof has not yet been provided. We provide such a proof for the BP updates in MPDA, establishing convergence to a unique fixed point. Simulations illustrate the convergence behavior of BP in MPDA and demonstrate a favorable accuracy--efficiency trade-off relative to both single-scan and two-scan variants of the multiple-detection multiple-hypothesis tracker.
ER -