New heuristic filters are proposed for state estimation of nonlinear dynamic systems based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and differential evolution (DE). The methodology converts state estimation problem into dynamic optimization to find the best estimate recursively. In the proposed strategy the particle number is adaptively set based on the weighted variance of the particles. To have a filter with minimal parameter settings, PSO with exponential distribution (PSO-E) is selected in conjunction with jDE to self-adapt the other control parameters. The performance of the proposed adaptive evolutionary algorithms i.e. adaptive PSO-E, adaptive DE and adaptive jDE is studied through a comparative study on a suite of well-known uni- and multi-modal benchmark functions. The results indicate an improved performance of the adaptive algorithms relative to original simple versions. Further, the performance of the proposed heuristic filters generally called adaptive particle swarm filters (APSF) or adaptive differential evolution filters (ADEF) are evaluated using different linear (nonlinear)/Gaussian (non-Gaussian) test systems. Comparison of the results to those of the extended Kalman filter, unscented Kalman filter, and particle filter indicate that the adopted strategy fulfills the essential requirements of accuracy for nonlinear state estimation. 
State estimation of nonlinear dynamic systems using weighted variance-based adaptive particle swarm optimization