A reusable HLA federation for simulation of airport traffic assistance/automation systems

To operate an airport at its maximum capacity, especially under poor weather conditions, several regulations, equipment or computer-based assistance systems are currently under evaluation. The French Aeronautics and Space Research Center (ONERA) is carrying out a federative R&D project to propose solutions which enhance traffic management of future airports while maintaining safety. One goal of this initiative is to evaluate through simulation several levels of automation, assistance equipment, and tools for controllers, To achieve this goal, a reusable High Level Architecture kernel federation has been designed. In this paper, we describe the architecture of this federation and discuss how it can be easily reused to integrate existing simulators of airport traffic assistance or automation systems. The HLA federation has been written in C++ and Java languages, and uses the RTI NG freely available from the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO).