In this paper, a novel nonlinear filter named Sparse-grid Quadrature Filter (SGQF) is proposed. The filter utilizes weighted sparse-grid quadrature points to approximate the multi-dimensional integrals in the nonlinear Bayesian estimation algorithm. The locations and weights of the univariate quadrature points with a range of accuracy levels are determined by the moment matching method. Then the univariate quadrature point sets are extended to form a multi-dimensional grid using the sparse-grid theory. Compared with the conventional point-based methods, the estimation accuracy level of the SGQF can be flexibly controlled and the number of sparse-grid quadrature points for the SGQF is a polynomial of the dimension of the system, which alleviates the curse of dimensionality for high dimensional problems. The Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is proven to be a subset of the SGQF at the level-2 accuracy. The performance of this filter is demonstrated by an orbit estimation problem. The simulation results show that the SGQF achieves higher accuracy than the Extended Kalman Filter (EKE), the UKF, and the Cubature Kalman Filter (CKF). In addition, the SGQF is computationally much more efficient than the multidimensional Gauss Hermite Quadrature Filter (GHQF) with the same performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.