Master Thesis - Past Projects - Abstract

Distributed simulation with HLA

ID: LiTH-IDA-Ex-02/47

Simulation is an important tool when developing military weapon systems. Because of the expensive hardware, only a few real test are practical to make. To test the systems without using hardware, simulation is used. Simulation is also extensively used for training of the operators of the final system, and for developing tactics. The High Level Architecture (HLA) is a standard for building component based simulations. The standard is developed by the U.S. Defense Modeling and Simulation Office to allow reuse of simulations. The components can be distributed on different machines that are connected to a network. HLA is primarily used in military applications, but civilian usage is also possible. This thesis describes how HLA can be used for simulation at Saab Bofors Dynamics. The thesis consists of three major parts: * An overview of the HLA standard with references to important documents. * An overview and evaluation of different tools and implementations used with HLA. This part also contains recommendations for what tools and implementations that are best suitable for Saab Bofors Dynamics. * A description of a method to adapt Saab Bofors Dynamics TACSIM simulator to work with HLA, and results from a prototype implementation of HLA in TACSIM. The prototype implementation shows that applications not designed for HLA from the beginning can be adapted to work with HLA. Proposals of future work and applications of HLA are described at the end of the thesis.

Keywords: HLA, High Level Architecture, Missile, Simulation, Distributed system,Network

Author(s): Patrik Svensson

Contact: Anders Törne