Federation Management in the Joint Training Confederation 2004

摘要

The Federation Management Tool (FMT) has been used by and adapted for many federations, including the Joint Training Confederation (JTC). It provides insight into the execution of an HLA federation by providing information on time management, object ownership, and communications. The FMT joins an HLA federation and participates as a peer of all other federates, obtaining data through the Management Object Model (MOM) and MOM extensions. However, the FMT provides only one view of the federation execution at a time; for federation managers to have multiple FMT windows open at a time, multiple FMT federates must be joined. Multiple views of the execution of the federation are a requirement in the JTC, as the current infrastructure used by the JTC - the ALSP Infrastructure Software (AIS) - provides this capability. Joining multiple FMT federates has several drawbacks. First, increasing the number of federates increases the complexity of the HLA federation, increasing the risk of failure. Second, the resource demands of the FMT are not insignificant; it requires processing and memory resources comparable to many other HLA federates. Third, it puts constraints on the hosts that can run the FMT, as it requires RTI libraries and the Java Runtime Environment to be installed. This paper will present a new FMT architecture that is modular, extensible, and provides the ability to attach multiple FMT clients using a single FMT federate and significantly reduced resources. One of the clients that has been developed provides the required multiple views into federation execution without any additional client-side software or significant system resources required Other clients may be quickly developed to add new functionality, such as an audible alert tool. Other federations that use standard or extended MOM data may use this architecture to create new lightweight modules that enhance FMT functionality with reduced development time.