Abstract: The photoelectric positioning of moving targets cannot do the mean filtering as simple as the stationary targets. In view of this, the particle filter algorithm was introduced, which could be applied in both linear and nonlinear systems. Firstly, based on the requirements of photoelectric positioning, the calculation formulas as well as the initial value and parameter selection formulas were deduced in detail. Secondly, the photoelectric passive positioning algorithm of sea moving targets with only measurement noise and with the measurement and motion noises was simulated, which verified the validity of algorithm. Finally, the influence of noise intensity on filtering effect, the influence of filtering parameters selection on filtering effect, the influence of target motion mode on filtering following performance and the resampling algorithms on filtering effect were discussed. The conclusions are as follows: ① the particle filter can be used in the photoelectric positioning process of moving targets to effectively reduce the positioning error; ② the particle filter algorithm has strong robustness, which is suitable for the situations such as large noise, big changes of target motion morphology, etc.