Introduction to particle filters for tracking applications in the passive acoustic monitoring of cetaceans

The application of particle filters to two tracking problems in passive acoustic monitoring are discussed. Specifically we describe algorithms for extracting the contours of delphinid whistles and the localization of vocalizing animals in three dimensions using a distributed sensor array. The work is focused on highlighting the potential of particle filters in the analysis of bioacoustic signals. The discussion is based on one particular form of particle filter: the sequential importance resampling filter.