Little by little does the trick design and construction of a discrete event agent-based simulation framework

Abstract

Simulation is one of the most widely used techniques in operations research. In the military context, agent-based simulations have been extensively used by defense agencies worldwide. Despite the numerous disadvantages and limitations associated with timestepping, most of the combat-oriented agent-based simulation models are time-step implementations. The Discrete Event Scheduling (DES) paradigm, on the other hand, is free of these disadvantages and limitations. The scope of this thesis is to design and implement a library of reusable software components that will facilitate building combat-oriented agent-based simulation models by extending the Simkit DES toolkit. We describe our design of what an agent-based DES implementation framework should look like. We show that the extensive use of Java interfaces allows the user to implement different models and scenarios without being constrained by pre-built components. We also enhance Simkit's existing Sensing model by introducing a Situational Awareness model and a Behavioral model. Finally, we build a small agent-based model using the component architecture to demonstrate the library's functionality.