Easing the Development of HLA Federates: The HLA Development Kit and Its Exploitation in the SEE Project

The Modeling & Simulation (M&S) of modern cyber-physical systems is presenting new challenges. New M&S techniques, methods and tools are emerging that take advantage of distributed simulation environments. One of the most mature and popular standard for distributed simulation is the IEEE 1516-2010 - High Level Architecture (HLA) that, although originally developed for military applications, is increasingly exploited in a great variety of application domains due to its capabilities to enable the interoperability and reusability of distributed simulation components. However, the development of fully fledged simulation models, based on the IEEE 1516-2010 standard, is still a challenging task and requires considerable development effort that often results not only in an increase in development time but also in low reliability. In this context, the paper presents a general-purpose, domain-independent framework that aims to ease the development of HLA-based simulations. Its effectiveness is exemplified in the context of the Simulation Exploration Experience (SEE) project lead by NASA and which involves several U.S. And European Institutions.