A framework for fault-tolerance in HLA-based distributed simulations

ABSTRACT

The widespread use of simulation in future military systems depends, among others, on the degree of reuse and availability of simulation models. Simulation support in such systems must also cope with failure in software or hardware. Research in fault-tolerant distributed simulation, especially in the context of the High Level Architecture (HLA), has been quite sparse. Nor does the HLA standard itself cover fault-tolerance extensively. This paper describes a framework, named Distributed Resource Management System (DRMS), for robust execution of federations. The implementation of the framework is based on Web Services and Semantic Web technology, and provides fundamental services and a consistent mechanism for description of resources managed by the environment. To evaluate the proposed framework, a federation has been developed that utilizes time-warp mechanism for synchronization. In this paper, we describe our approach to fault tolerance and give an example to illustrate how DRMS behaves when it faces faulty federates.

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