A framework for agile development of simulation-based system design tools

Analysis and validation using simulation is a helpful tool in systems engineering, but requires in-depth knowledge of various aspects of the system itself, the used model class(es), an appropriate software tool, and sometimes software engineering. Usually, this expertise is spread over a number of team members, and thus the development of a simulation-based system design tool is not a simple task. This paper presents a framework enabling the rapid development of extensible and reusable simulation-based applications. It supports an agile, iterative, evolutionary, and architecture-centric software development process. The design of the framework together with its components as well as the corresponding software development process is described. As an example, an environment for the configuration and analysis of wireless sensor network applications in the aeronautic domain is presented, which has been designed and implemented based on the proposed environment.