A forward-only scheme for online learning of proposal distributions in particle filters

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Procope-Mamert, Sylvain, Chopin, Nicolas, Delattre, Maud, King, Guillaume Kon Kam
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866914273487224832
author Procope-Mamert, Sylvain
Chopin, Nicolas
Delattre, Maud
King, Guillaume Kon Kam
author_facet Procope-Mamert, Sylvain
Chopin, Nicolas
Delattre, Maud
King, Guillaume Kon Kam
contents We introduce a new online approach for constructing proposal distributions in particle filters using a forward scheme. Our method progressively incorporates future observations to refine proposals. This is in contrast to backward-scheme algorithms that require access to the entire dataset, such as the iterated auxiliary particle filters (Guarniero et al., 2017, arXiv:1511.06286) and controlled sequential Monte Carlo (Heng et al., 2020, arXiv:1708.08396) which leverage all future observations through backward recursion. In comparison, our forward scheme achieves a gradual improvement of proposals that converges toward the proposal targeted by these backward methods. We show that backward approaches can be numerically unstable even in simple settings. Our forward method, however, offers significantly greater robustness with only a minor trade-off in performance, measured by the variance of the marginal likelihood estimator. Numerical experiments on both simulated and real data illustrate the enhanced stability of our forward approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16089
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A forward-only scheme for online learning of proposal distributions in particle filters
Procope-Mamert, Sylvain
Chopin, Nicolas
Delattre, Maud
King, Guillaume Kon Kam
Computation
We introduce a new online approach for constructing proposal distributions in particle filters using a forward scheme. Our method progressively incorporates future observations to refine proposals. This is in contrast to backward-scheme algorithms that require access to the entire dataset, such as the iterated auxiliary particle filters (Guarniero et al., 2017, arXiv:1511.06286) and controlled sequential Monte Carlo (Heng et al., 2020, arXiv:1708.08396) which leverage all future observations through backward recursion. In comparison, our forward scheme achieves a gradual improvement of proposals that converges toward the proposal targeted by these backward methods. We show that backward approaches can be numerically unstable even in simple settings. Our forward method, however, offers significantly greater robustness with only a minor trade-off in performance, measured by the variance of the marginal likelihood estimator. Numerical experiments on both simulated and real data illustrate the enhanced stability of our forward approach.
title A forward-only scheme for online learning of proposal distributions in particle filters
topic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16089