A study on Discrete Event Simulation (DES) in a High-Level Architecture (HLA) networked simulation

Abstract

This thesis investigates implementing Discrete Event Simulation (DES) concepts using Simkit packages into a High- Level Architecture (HLA)-networked simulation, thus addressing sustainability of the HLA methodology into the future. Through the DES concept of predicting and anticipating the time of when events will occur, redundant and excessive exchange of common data, like position and sensory status, can be removed. This DES implementation considerably reduces the network load and removes data processing incompatibility between simulations. A design involving several concepts of DES and HLA simulation led to the creation of a Simkit based application library. Interfacing this application library with two DES models demonstrated and proved the feasibility of DES concepts in HLA-networked simulations. A generic combat scenario modeled using this methodology, successfully showed the intended advantages of the thesis. The ease of linking non-DES and non-HLA simulations to an HLA environment was enhanced using a common set of interfaces built based on the resulting application library. Through a simple comparison with traditional time-stepped real-time simulation of the same scenario configuration, it was shown that data exchange between simulations was reduced by several orders of magnitude. This freed a substantial amount of network resources to perform other tasks, hence, improving network performance.