HLA real‐time extension

Abstract

AbstractThe IEEE 1516 Standard ‘High Level Architecture (HLA)’ and its implementation ‘Run‐Time Infra‐structure (RTI)’ defines a general‐purpose network communication mechanism for Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS). However, it does not address real‐time requirements of DIS. Current operating system technologies can provide real‐time processing through some real‐time operating systems (RTOSs) and the Internet is also moving to an age of Quality of Service (QoS), providing delay and jitter bounded services. With the availability of RTOSs and IP QoS, it is possible for HLA to be extended to take advantage of these technologies in order to construct an architecture for Real‐Time DIS (RT‐DIS). This extension will be a critical aspect of applications in virtual medicine, distributed virtual environments, weapon simulation, aerospace simulation and others.This paper outlines the current real‐time technology with respect to operating systems and at the network infrastructure level. After summarizing the requirements and our experiences with RT‐DIS, we present a proposal for HLA real‐time extension and architecture for real‐time RTI. Similar to the growth of real‐time CORBA (Common Object Request Broker) after the mature based CORBA standard suite, Real‐Time HLA is a natural extension following the standardization of HLA into IEEE 1516 in September 2000. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.