Evaluation of a Fault-Tolerance Mechanism for HLA-Based Distributed Simulations

Successful integration of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) in the future Network-Based Defence (NBD) depends, among other things, on providing faulttolerant (FT) distributed simulations. This paper describes a framework, named Distributed Resource Management System (DRMS), for robust execution of simulations based on the High Level Architecture. More specifically, a mechanism for FT in simulations synchronized according to the time-warp protocol is presented and evaluated. The results show that utilization of the FT mechanism, in a worst-case scenario, increases the total number of generated messages by 68% if one fault occurs. When the FT mechanism is not utilized, the same scenario shows an increase in total number of generated messages by 90%. Considering the worst-case scenario a plausible requirement on an M&S infrastructure of the NBD, the overhead caused by the FT mechanism is considered acceptable.