CAR-EnKF: A Covariance-Adaptive and Recalibrated Ensemble Kalman Filter Framework

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jiang, Shida, Tao, Shengyu, Liu, Zihe, Moura, Scott
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Jiang, Shida
Tao, Shengyu
Liu, Zihe
Moura, Scott
author_facet Jiang, Shida
Tao, Shengyu
Liu, Zihe
Moura, Scott
contents The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is widely used for nonlinear and high-dimensional state estimation because it replaces complex covariance propagation with simple ensemble statistics. However, conventional EnKF implementations can become overconfident in the presence of measurement nonlinearity. The commonly used covariance inflation technique only partially alleviates this issue. This paper proposes a covariance-adaptive and recalibrated ensemble Kalman filter (CAR-EnKF) framework for nonlinear state estimation. The framework introduces two improvements that are only active for nonlinear measurements and reduce to the conventional EnKF framework without covariance inflation in the linear case: (i) a recalibration mechanism that reassesses the effect of the chosen Kalman gain after updating the ensemble mean, and (ii) a positive semidefinite covariance compensation term that accounts for measurement nonlinearity. An adaptive update law based on the normalized innovation squared further tunes the compensation magnitude online. The framework is algorithmically general and is specialized here to the stochastic EnKF and the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF). Experiments on feature-based SLAM and the Lorenz--96 system show that CAR-EnKF consistently reduces RMSE relative to conventional EnKF baselines, with especially large improvements at low measurement-noise levels. The related codes are available at \href{https://github.com/Shida-Jiang/CAR-EnKF-A-Covariance-Adaptive-and-Recalibrated-Ensemble-Kalman-Filter-Framework}
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_17343
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CAR-EnKF: A Covariance-Adaptive and Recalibrated Ensemble Kalman Filter Framework
Jiang, Shida
Tao, Shengyu
Liu, Zihe
Moura, Scott
Systems and Control
The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is widely used for nonlinear and high-dimensional state estimation because it replaces complex covariance propagation with simple ensemble statistics. However, conventional EnKF implementations can become overconfident in the presence of measurement nonlinearity. The commonly used covariance inflation technique only partially alleviates this issue. This paper proposes a covariance-adaptive and recalibrated ensemble Kalman filter (CAR-EnKF) framework for nonlinear state estimation. The framework introduces two improvements that are only active for nonlinear measurements and reduce to the conventional EnKF framework without covariance inflation in the linear case: (i) a recalibration mechanism that reassesses the effect of the chosen Kalman gain after updating the ensemble mean, and (ii) a positive semidefinite covariance compensation term that accounts for measurement nonlinearity. An adaptive update law based on the normalized innovation squared further tunes the compensation magnitude online. The framework is algorithmically general and is specialized here to the stochastic EnKF and the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF). Experiments on feature-based SLAM and the Lorenz--96 system show that CAR-EnKF consistently reduces RMSE relative to conventional EnKF baselines, with especially large improvements at low measurement-noise levels. The related codes are available at \href{https://github.com/Shida-Jiang/CAR-EnKF-A-Covariance-Adaptive-and-Recalibrated-Ensemble-Kalman-Filter-Framework}
title CAR-EnKF: A Covariance-Adaptive and Recalibrated Ensemble Kalman Filter Framework
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17343