A Distributed Approach to the Simulation of Inherently Distributed Systems

摘要

Inherently distributed systems are systems that are distributed by their own nature; in other words, they are composed of subsystems, which are physically and geographically separated. Examples of such systems are the distributed computer systems with various hosts geographically located; the wireless systems with a number of base and subscriber stations geographically separated; the satellite constellations, the military battlefields and so on. Such systems have, in many cases, been studied by use of Local Simulation (LS), in other words, a simulation run by a single host, or by use of Distributed Simulation (DS) in which the simulation system is divided into a number of federates, run by separate hosts for the scope of obtaining resource scalability and simulator reusability. In this paper, the DS approach is seen from a different point of view: a way to give higher representativeness to the simulation of inherently distributed systems. The approach consists of locating the federates in the same geographic positions of the subsystems that are designed to become part of the inherently distributed system. In this way, the distributed system can be studied in a very realistic way before being implemented. In this paper the problems and the advantages of this new DS approach are discussed and the technology is presented that supports and facilitates its introduction.