Publications

This article discusses management tasks that have to be supported for an efficient reuse of simulation models within HLA-based distributed simulation environments. After a review of the controversial discussions on the deployment of distributed simulation in the industrial domain, this article derives the need of support for such basic management tasks. Based on the practical experiences from an industrial project from the manufacturing domain, in which several legacy SLX models had to be integrated, we demonstrate how these management tasks have been supported and which tools were needed for this purpose. We furthermore discuss the results of the distributed simulation and show the necessity and the added benefit provided through its usage in industry.

This paper reports main results of a peer study on future trends in distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments. The peer study was based on the opinions of more than 60 experts which were collected by means of a survey and personal interviews. The survey collected opinions concerning the current state-of-the-art, relevance, and research challenges that must be addressed to advance and strengthen these technologies to a level where they are ready to be applied in day-to-day business in industry. Most important result of this study is the observation that as research areas, both distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments are attributed a high future practical relevance and a high economic potential. At the same time the study shows that the current adoption of these technologies in the industrial sector is rather low. The study analyses reasons for this observation and identifies open research challenges.

This paper summarizes the results of a peer study on future trends in distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments initiated by the Fraunhofer IFF. The study is based on the opinions of more than 60 experts which were collected by means of a survey and personal interviews. Most important result of this study is the fact that both distributed simulation and distributed virtual environments as research areas are attributed a high future practical relevance and a high economic potential. At the same time the study shows that the current adoption of the technologies in the industrial sector is rather low. The study also analyses reasons for this observation and identifies open research challenges in these areas.

Commercial-off-the-shelf Simulation Packages (CSPs), visual interactive modelling environments such as Arena, Anylogic, Flexsim, Simul8, Witness, etc., are important "black box" software tools that support the development, experimentation and visualization of simulation models. They are widely used in commerce, defence, health, manufacturing and logistics. There is a growing need to link together, or to interoperate, models developed in these CSPs across computer networks. The motivations for this include data sensitivity, difficult to move resources and speed up. - There have been various attempts to create distributed simulations with these CSPs and their tools, some with the High Level Architecture (HLA). In this context, a distributed simulation or federation is composed of a set of CSPs and their models. A CSP will typically simulate its model using a discrete-event simulation algorithm. Each model/CSP represents a federate normally running on its own computer. In a distributed simulation, each model/CSP federate therefore exchanges data via a runtime infrastructure (RTI) implemented over a network in a time synchronized manner. The question is what data is exchanged and how is it done. The answer to these questions can be quite difficult and it is further compounded by no "standard" terminology between the CSPs. What is clear is that there is no common approach. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to identify the actual functionality of these implementations. As a step towards creating a common approach to interoperability between models and their CSPs, the COTS Simulation Package Interoperability Product Development Group (CSPI PDG) at the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization have developed a standard set of Interoperability Reference Models (IRMs), the SISO CSPI PDG Standard for Commercial Off-The-Shelf Simulation Package Interoperability Reference Models. These IRMs state clearly interoperability rules for entity transfer, shared resources, shared events and shared data structures. - This talk will outline the processes by which these IRMs have been created, how they are intended to be used, and current progress in standardizing their implementation.

Distributed simulation has a long history at the Winter Simulation Conference. Although successful in the military domain it appears, however, that the idea of applying distributed simulation in other fields for modeling and analysis of large-scale, heterogeneous systems such as communication networks or supply chains has still not reached the stage of commercial use until today. This panel attempts to identify reasons for this phenomenon by debating whether distributed simulation is actually a real-world necessity or should rather be considered ivory tower fancy.